A/N: Oh my God, has it really been three months since I updated? Let me tell you, I re-wrote this chapter at least three times. I tore my hair out. Then I set it aside so that I would be sure to have enough hair left to tear out over my final exams. Today I came back to it, read what I had, and then, magically, I GODDAMN finally GODDAMN knew how to GODDAMN finish it.

With any luck, the next chapter will not take me nearly as long. Thanks for reading! 3

Once the thought had come to her, it seemed so simple. Blood for the breaking, and for the mending. A Charter Mage's blood had been spilled here, and her life stolen away. Only a similar sacrifice, made willingly, could undo the damage. Perhaps, for an ordinary mage, the exchange would have to be equal. A life given to negate the life taken.

But Sabriel was no ordinary mage. She was Abhorsen. So she was reasonably certain that this experiment wouldn't kill her.

She drew her sword, and with only a moment of hesitation she drew it across the palm of her hand. She closed her fingers lightly over the welling blood to keep it from spilling onto the ground.

"So you finally figured it out," said Mogget, his eyelids drooping, "Took you long enough."

Ignoring him, and the infuriating implication that he had known the answer all along, Sabriel opened her hand and slapped it against the Stone, right in the middle of the dried bloodstain on the larger of the two halves. For an instant, she had an impression of wetness, of thick red liquid oozing out from under her fingers and splattering around her palm, and then there was only darkness.

She awoke, it seemed, only a moment later. She was flat on her back in shallow water that lapped gently at her cheeks. The aches and pains that had plagued her body for so many weeks had vanished. It was peaceful where she was. Above her all she could see was the night sky, a vision so beautiful that it took her breath away. She could not remember ever seeing so many stars, or seeing them shine so brightly. Not in Life, anyway.

Then she realized where she was, and she sat upright with a gasp and a panicked lurch, shielding her eyes from the light of the stars. She had been here before. This was the Ninth Precinct.

Almost by reflex, Sabriel drew her sword as she shakily found her feet. It was disorienting, having been thrown so deep into Death so quickly, and she felt more secure with steel in her hands. But though she turned a full circle in a defensive stance, looking for whatever being might have dragged her here, she saw nothing. There was only the still water and the bright sky, as far she could see.

"Mogget?" she called, her voice sounding thin to her ears. There was no answer, which did not necessarily mean that she was alone.

That was when she noticed that the water lapping at her legs was tinted ever-so-slightly red. She dipped her hand in it and brought it to her nose. It was only a trace, but it was definitely blood. She cast her eyes about once more. There was no blood in the water anywhere else. It was just a just a ring of brownish-red at her feet, and a ribbon of the same leading away. Sabriel followed it with her eyes. The ribbon snaked through the shallow water of the Ninth Precinct until it passed under an arch of darkness that Sabriel hadn't noticed before. If she squinted, she could see the line of blood continuing past the arch and into the darker waters of the Eighth Precinct.

That was wrong, Sabriel knew. There were no windows between Precincts. It took complex Free Magic to pass each Gate, but somehow the bloody trail had punched a hole clear through the Eighth. Sabriel suddenly had the impression that the disruption would continue through the Seventh, the Sixth, and further, all the way back to Life.

Then, suddenly, it made sense. A broken Stone was a doorway leading both into and out of Death. The blood of the slain mage had marked a path through all nine Precincts. The Dead had been using it to climb out into Life, and now Sabriel had slid down it as far into Death as she could go.

But now that she had found this path, what was she to do with it? Clearly the Stone had reacted to Sabriel's blood-magic, but hardly in the way she had expected. Nervously, Sabriel clenched her fist and was surprised to feel a stab of pain. Physical wounds rarely carried over into Death, but a glance confirmed that the cut across her palm was still present and still oozing blood. She watched as a few drops formed in the creases of her fist, rolled together, and fell off her knuckles into the water.

As soon as the crimson droplets splashed down, the water at Sabriel's feet rapidly swirled and cleared. Sabriel blinked twice, took a step forward into an area of water that was still tainted with blood, and squeezed another drop of her own blood into it. Again, the two stains cancelled each other out, and the water was left clean. One more test – she waded farther up the path and stepped through the dark arch (how strange it was to cross so easily between Precincts!), careful not to spill any more blood as she went. When she was through, she tipped the little pool of blood that had collected in her palm into the water. Nothing happened.

Sabriel took a deep breath, held it as she thought, and exhaled slowly, resigned. So she couldn't break the path in the middle. She had to erase it bit by bit from the end back up, spilling her blood the whole way. No wonder so few Stones were ever repaired once they had been broken. It was a daunting task.

But at least now she knew what she had to do, which was more than she had been able to say for the last several weeks.

She returned to the end of the bloody trail and began her long walk back, flexing her fingers every few seconds and letting her blood wash away the stain from the water at her feet. This time, when she passed through the hole in the Eighth Gate, she watched it close behind her without a sound, leaving no trace that it had ever been there. Sabriel continued with a satisfied smile.

The Eighth Precinct passed unremarkably. Usually Sabriel would have had to keep on guard against the patches of shooting flame, but they seemed to keep their distance from the bloodstained water. Even the Gate didn't touch it; the fiery line ended several feet before each side of the darkened arch. The Seventh Precinct passed similarly, but by then Sabriel was beginning to be on edge. This was a highway out of Death. The Dead had been using it for months. Surely they would not let Sabriel destroy it without a fight. She decided that there was probably an ambush waiting for her in the calm waters of the Sixth Precinct, so as she passed through the Gate she readied her sword and loosened the fasteners on Saraneth and Ranna. She would choose one bell or the other once she discovered whether she was facing a single Greater Dead rester or a mob of weaker Dead.

To her surprise, she found neither. The Sixth Precinct was as calm as the Seventh. Now, instead of enjoying her peaceful walk through Death, Sabriel found herself jumping at every splash and whisper as the sounds of her passing echoed in the empty Precinct. If the Dead were not waiting for her here, then where? She crept nervously through the still, shallow water, wondering when something might jump out at her. She made it nearly to the next Gate before she figured out what was happening.

She would have to pass through the Fifth Precinct next, walking the narrow path above the soul-sapping lake. The denizens who guarded this broken Stone had planned for this; instead of battling the Abhorsen on even footing in the Sixth Precinct, they intended to meet her on the narrow bridge over the Fifth and let her fall to her death.

She passed through the hole in the Fifth Gate, closed it behind her, and turned to face whatever might come.

At first, nothing did. The balance beam that stretched over the black waters of the Fifth Precinct was stained with dried blood; Sabriel dropped some of her own onto it and it liquefied, dripped into the water below, and was gone. She took another step and did the same. One more step, and another, waiting for the ambush that she knew must come.

It was almost a relief when she felt a clammy tendril wrap itself around her ankle and try to pull her into the water. At least now the waiting was over, and the fight had begun.

With a slash of her sword, the tendril fell away from her foot. Sabriel barely had time to find her balance before three more shot out and wrapped themselves around her neck and wrists. She wrenched one hand free and went for her bells, but as she glanced out over the bridge she saw that she was in trouble. Black shapes were crawling out of the darkness, dripping with the soul-sapping water they had bathed in. They draped themselves over the bridge, one climbing on top of the other, an unmovable mass of Dead blocking her way.

Sabriel rang Ranna, but its effect was so diluted over all the many Dead that it only slowed them down a little. Then they were upon her, and it was all Sabriel could do to stay upright on her narrow footing. They tore at her and suffocated her, dragging her downwards from all angles. For every one she cut down, three more took its place. And now she could feel their clammy appendages grasping at her arms and body, trying to rip the sword from her grip and the bells from her chest. She was losing. She was going to lose.

Suddenly the enormity of it hit her. She had been such a fool to come here, thinking that she could succeed. Now she would fall, and her soul would be dragged under. How long would it take for the waters here to corrupt her? A year? Months? Weeks? If she became submerged in that water, sooner or later the last of the Abhorsens would become the newest of the Greater Dead. She imagined crawling back out of Death by the same path she had tried to destroy. Perhaps her body would still be waiting for her there. Perhaps the creature that was no longer Sabriel would wear her skin and walk unmolested into the Great Hall of the castle at Belisaere, and there…

"NOOO!" Sabriel's voice was cracked and desperate as she redoubled her efforts. Free and Charter Magic flew from her lips, spells she didn't even know she knew holding the Dead just barely at bay. She flailed and fought, protecting her weapons from the grabbing hands that came at her from all sides. And, though those many hands still held her back and pulled her down, she moved forward.

Each step was a battle. The Dead screamed venom into her ears and tore at her body, but she overpowered them by magic and sword, and took another step. She no longer had to squeeze the wound on her hand in order to spill her blood on the path; she bled freely from many wounds, and the waters all around were washed with sprays of red from both her and her opponents.

A gap in the mass of Dead gave her a glimpse of the arch into the relative safety of the Fourth Precinct ahead of her. She was so close. It was amazing how far she had come by small steps, fueled only by her own innate determination and the horror of what would happen if she should fail. But even with the passage only ten steps, then nine, then eight, then just an arm's reach in front of her, it didn't matter. Sabriel had reached the end of her strength. One last breathless reach passed the tips of her fingers through the arch, and then the Dead were dragging her back, undoing her hard-won steps, pushing and pulling and trying to topple her from her path…

"Abhorsen!" A clear voice called out to her, and then suddenly Sabriel's hand was caught in a grip like a vice. She almost tried to shake it off, but then she realized that unlike the rough, clammy hands of the Dead that were all over her now, the hand that now held hers was warm and dry. She gripped it in return, and with an explosion of power it pulled her forward and up, out of the hands of the Dead, almost off her feet, and through the arch that bridged the Fourth Gate. Blood fell from her clothes and hair as she passed through and closed the arch after her, trapping the Dead on the other side of the Gate. Their screaming and the grotesque sounds of the movement of their corrupted bodies were suddenly cut off, and it was silent.

It took Sabriel several seconds of kneeling, gasping in horror at her close call and wonderment at her sudden salvation, before she realized that she was still holding someone's hand. Her eyes traced up her savior's fingers to her arm to her face, at which point Sabriel finally understood. If the spindly little old woman's ceremonial jewelry hadn't given away her identity, the bleeding gash across her neck would have.

"The Mage of High Bridge," Sabriel choked out, still reeling.

"That's right," said the woman, "I'm Merida. You're kind of an idiot, aren't you?"

Sabriel stared, but Merida's voice held no malice. In fact, she was grinning a little. Sabriel was used to speaking to the Dead, but not to being teased by them. "Er…" she tried to reply, "I'm Abhorsen. But I guess you knew that already."

Merida helped Sabriel to her feet. The waters of the Fourth Precinct were calm and quiet. Sabriel's instincts told her to be on the lookout for the next wave that would soon come crashing through the Precinct, but Merida didn't seem concerned. "Yes," she said, "I'm very glad you're here, even though it looks like you came without much of a plan. That's why I stuck around instead of going on deeper into Death. I thought that if anyone was stupid enough to try to repair the Stone, they'd need my help." She smiled so widely that the muscles in her neck tensed, drawing the slit in her throat open a little. Sabriel suppressed a shudder. "Not that anyone ever tries to repair broken Stones, but I stayed anyway," Merida added.

"Then I'm very glad you did," said Sabriel, turning her death-grip on Merida's hand into a warm handshake before letting go, "I'm not too proud to admit that I was in trouble."

Merida smiled again, a strange expression on so corpselike a face. "The way ahead is clear," she assured Sabriel, "Let me walk you back into Life."

Walking through Death with Merida was a singular experience. Sabriel had not had friendly company in Death since her father's lessons. Having a companion, even a dead one, reminded her of a time when she felt safe and secure in the knowledge that someone more competent than she was taking care of things. That time, after all, would never come again.

"I peered out through the break in the Stone," Merida admitted, "Though I dared not walk back into Life, I watched the Dead rise. I watched my people leave. How many yet live?"

"As many as can fit onto the Bridge," said Sabriel, "That's where they've taken refuge."

Merida nodded, satisfied. "That's what I would have done. And my sister?"

Sabriel was about to ask how she could possibly be expected to remember individual people from the mob on the Bridge, and how she was to know which was Merida's kin, when she suddenly realized why Merida's face looked so familiar. "Oh!" she said, "The old woman who was in charge. You look just like her!" Well, not just like her. Merida was considerably skinnier, her hair longer and wilder, and her face darker and more heavily lined. But even a lifetime of wear could not completely hide the fact that the two faces had once been a matching set.

Merida laughed then, a laugh that may have been merry in life but now only sounded like an echo. "It takes you a while, but you catch on eventually," she teased, "Pashiel is my twin. So she lives. Good. That's good to know."

"But she's not a Charter Mage," Sabriel observed as she wrung blood from her hair and clothes into the water at her feet, "I thought that if one twin had the talent, that the other would as well. Why wasn't she trained?"

Merida replied, "Oh, she had a talent for Charter Magic same as me. But she was trained in other ways. She was the firstborn, so it was her duty to lead the town. Our father trained her as his successor, as my aunt trained me as hers. Pashiel became the ruler of High Bridge, and I became its Mage."

"That seems… arbitrary," said Sabriel.

Merida shrugged. "It worked well enough," she said, "We each had our role to play, and we did our duty. And even better, we never forgot that we were two sides of the same coin. Authority and power. Together, we made High Bridge flourish. Alone, we would have been forces for good, but together we were unstoppable. And when I was killed, the town fell into ruin, just as it would have if Pashiel had taken my place. Together, we might have stood against the Dead. Divided, we failed."

As Sabriel walked through the penultimate arch into the First Precinct, she tried not to think of how Merida's story might apply to her. Instead, she squeezed from her wounds the last few drops of blood necessary to erase the stain in the water all the way up to the border to Life. She peered through the final arch, and though it was like looking through a fractured haze, she thought she could see her body waiting there.

"Thank you," she said to Merida, "In saving me, you have saved much more than a single life."

Merida gave her one last smile. "A single life would have been enough. Go well, Abhorsen."

As Merida began to turn, beginning her long walk back into Death, Sabriel called out, "Do you want me to carry a message to your sister?"

Merida hesitated, then said, "No, thank you. In life, we left nothing unsaid." With that, her soul melted into the now-pure water and was carried swiftly downstream.

Sabriel took the final step back into Life, back into pain and uncertainty and Mogget's trying company, and with it she closed the final door that had been propped open by dark magic and Merida's blood. She had no sooner returned to her body than a shockwave bowled her over, and a light bright enough to sear her eyes burst forth from the Stone.

She scrambled to her feet, and at once she realized that all the aches and pains that had plagued her since setting foot in High Bridge were gone. Gone also was the despair and unease she had grappled with for so long. A healing warmth radiated from the Stone, and Sabriel was renewed within its glow. The Stone itself stood as it had when she had left it – standing in two pieces at right angles, awkward and ugly. But now the pieces were fused at the bottom, the seam between them erased. Charter marks flowed over its surface like water, dancing and bright.

The Stone would never look as it had before it was broken. It would always bear the scar of what had happened to it. But it shone with the Charter as brightly as ever. It would keep the Dead at bay. It would keep the town alive.

Mogget didn't say a word as Sabriel rolled up her bedroll and packed her things. He sat passively by as she wrapped the cut on her hand – the one wound that was left on her body. It was only when Sabriel invited him to ride on her pack with a cheerful, "Come on then," that he moved at all.

"Yes, Abhorsen," he said, leaping onto her shoulder. And for once, his voice held a measure of respect.