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PRAISE FOR

GARTH NIX S

OLD KINGDOM TRILOGY

‘Sabriel is a winner, a fantasy that reads like realism. Here is a world with the same solidity and four-dimensional authority as our own, created with invention, clarity and intelligence. I congratulate Garth Nix.’

Philip Pullman

‘Weaving horror and fantasy into a rich, original story, Nix creates complex and fascinating lores, rituals and tools of necromancy ... a powerful, gripping quest story.’

The Age

‘Sabriel has a fast pace, drama, vivid decriptions, excitement and humour. Packs of putrefying zombies, too. What more could you want?’

Susan Price, The Guardian

‘The reader’s absorption into the intrigue, magic and dazzling richness of of the worlds and characters created by Nix is irresistable pleasure.’

Australian Review of Books

DISCOVER MORE ABOUT GARTH NIX AT:

www.allenandunwin.com

Other books by Garth Nix

Shades Children

The Ragwitch

Across the Wall

The Old Kingdom trilogy

Sabriel

Lirael

Abhorsen

The Keys to the Kingdom series

Mister Monday

Grim Tuesday

Drowned Wednesday

Sir Thursday

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This edition published in 2006

First published in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003

Copyright © Garth Nix, 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander St

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

Email: info@allenandunwin.com

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

from the National Library of Australia

www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74175 020 1

This book was printed in December 2009 at

McPherson’s Printing Group

76 Nelson Street, Maryborough, Victoria 3465, Australia

www.mcphersonsprinting.com.au

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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To Anna and Thomas Henry Nix

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Contents

prologue

part one

chapter one: a house besieged

chapter two: into the deep

chapter three: amaranth, rosemary and tears

chapter four: breakfast of ravens

chapter five: blow wind, come rain!

chapter six: the silver hemispheres

chapter seven: a last request

chapter eight: the testing of sameth

first interlude

part two

chapter nine: a dream of owls and flying dogs

chapter ten: prince sameth and hedge

chapter eleven: hidden in the reeds

chapter twelve: the destroyer in nicholas

chapter thirteen: details from the disreputable dog

chapter fourteen: flight to the wall

chapter fifteen: the perimeter

chapter sixteen: a major ’s decision

second interlude

part three

chapter seventeen: coming home to ancelstierre

chapter eighteen: chlorr of the mask

chapter nineteen: a tin of sardines

chapter twenty: the beginning of the end

chapter twenty - one: deeper into death

chapter twenty - two: junction boxes and southerlings

chapter twenty - three: lathal the abomination

chapter twenty - four: mogget’s inscrutable initiative

chapter twenty - five: the ninth gate

chapter twenty - six: sam and the shadow hands

chapter twenty - seven: when the lightning stops

chapter twenty - eight: the seven

chapter twenty - nine: the choice of yrael

epilogue

Extra...

Garth Nix answers FAQs...

books remembered: Garth Nix’s favourite books from childhood

prologue

Fog rose from the river, great billows of white weaving into the soot and smoke of the city of Corvere, to become the hybrid thing that the more popular newspapers called smog and The Times “miasmic fog”. Cold, dank and foul-smelling, it was dangerous by any name. At its thickest, it could smother, and it could transform the faintest hint of a cough into pneumonia.

But the unhealthiness of the fog was not its chief danger. That came from its other primary feature. The Corvere fog was a concealer, a veil that shrouded the city’s vaunted gaslights and confused both eyes and ears. When the fog lay on the city, all streets were dark, all echoes strange, and everywhere set for murder and mayhem.

“The fog shows no signs of lifting,” reported Damed, principal bodyguard to King Touchstone. His voice showed his dislike of the fog even though he knew it was only a natural phenomenon, a blend of industrial pollution and river mist. Back in their home, the Old Kingdom, such fogs were often created by Free Magic sorcerers. “Also, the... telephone... is not working, and the escort is both understrength and new. There is not one of the officers we usually have among them. I don’t think you should go, sire.”

Touchstone was standing by the window, peering out through the shutters. They’d had to shutter all the windows some days ago, when some of the crowd outside had adopted slingshots. Before that, the demonstrators hadn’t been able to throw half bricks far enough, as the mansion that housed the Old Kingdom Embassy was set in a walled park and a good fifty yards back from the street.

Not for the first time, Touchstone wished that he could reach the Charter and draw upon it for strength and magical assistance. But they were five hundred miles south of the Wall, and the air was still and cold. Only when the wind blew very strongly from the north could he feel even the slightest touch of his magical heritage.

Sabriel felt the lack of the Charter even more, Touchstone knew. He glanced at his wife. She was at her desk, as usual, writing one last letter to an old school friend, a prominent businessman, or a member of the Ancelstierre Moot. Promising gold, or support, or introductions, or perhaps making thinly veiled threats of what would happen if they were stupid enough to support Corolini’s attempts to settle hundreds of thousands of Southerling refugees over the Wall, in the Old Kingdom.

Touchstone still found it odd to see Sabriel dressed in Ancelstierran clothes, particularly their court clothes, as she was wearing today. She should be in her blue and silver tabard, with the bells of the Abhorsen across her chest, her sword at her side. Not in a silver dress with a hussar’s pelisse worn on one shoulder and a strange little pillbox hat pinned to her deep-black hair. And the small automatic pistol in her silver mesh purse was no substitute for a sword.


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