Epilogue:

Abhorsen bowed his head against the cold rain. Though exhausted and freezing, his legs kept a steady rhythm. The bells swung against his chest with every step, but he barely felt them. In the years since they had been passed down to him, they had become like a part of his skin. Likewise, the sword at his side was like an extension of his arm. He had grown taller and stronger in those years, and his face had lost some of its openness and innocence. Only one person in the world remembered the boy he had once been.

Outside the walls of Sindle, after the siege was broken, Andrael and the newly-appointed Abhorsen had picked through the carcasses strewn over the rocks until they found the bodies of the two necromancers locked in a deadly embrace. Drawing the marks for cleansing fire over the battlefield, hand in hand they had each buried the last of their families.

From Sindle they had continued north to consult with the Clayr. But Abhorsen had soon come to understand his predecessor's distaste for the company of those strange seers. Despite all his questioning, they could not clarify the circumstances of their prophecy concerning Andrael. In fact, most of the time Abhorsen hadn't even been sure they knew who they were talking to. They had left their horses behind, and flew back to Abhorsen's House on a borrowed Paperwing.

Together, they had fought the tides of change as best they could. They had quelled uprisings, warded towns against the Dead, and battled powerful enemies at every turn. But the years had gone by too fast, and each one had brought new challenges and new threats. The regency had fallen, just as everyone had known it would. Abhorsen and Andrael had traveled to Belisaere to try to organize what remained of the government of the Old Kingdom, but it was no use. The once-proud capitol had long been descending into a town of beggars and thieves. Now no one but a true monarch could restore order.

"I must have failed," Andrael had wept, "There must have been something I was supposed to do that I missed. We've been working so hard, but things are only getting worse!"

Abhorsen had comforted her as best he could, but his false optimism had stuck in his throat. Inwardly, he had agreed that they had probably missed the narrow path to salvation somewhere along the line. On the journey home, Andrael had discovered that she was pregnant.

Eight months later, Abhorsen wandered the forests toward the Wall, searching for the woman he loved. He cursed himself for allowing her to leave the safety of Abhorsen's House, but the truth was that he needed her. She had become too powerful a Charter mage, too valuable an asset, to leave behind. Even the late stage of her pregnancy had never slowed her down. But now they had become separated, and the bloody streaks in the snow signaled the worst.

Abhorsen had been searching for hours when he finally saw the flicker of a fire through the trees. He hurried toward it, only to trip and sink to his knees as something drove the wind from his lungs like a blow to the belly. He had felt souls leaving their bodies before as little taps in his gut, but never like this. He knew without looking that Andrael was dead.

He dragged himself to the edge of the clearing, and stopped in the shadows to observe silently. He barely saw the gypsies who knelt around the fire, or their makeshift camp just beyond. His eyes would not leave the bony form beneath the rough blankets, the pale freckles on paler skin where the blankets ended, and the long, red hair that had once been so fiery, but which now lay spread on the ground, graying and muddy. For a body he knew so well, it was strangely foreign. Without a soul, it was nothing but flesh. She was truly gone. Abhorsen prepared to retreat quietly back into the forest.

"The child, too?" said one of the gypsies. Abhorsen stopped. In his grief, he almost hadn't noticed the tiny bundle held by the midwife. A baby. Her wounds had caused Andrael to go into labor prematurely, and she had given birth before she died. At that moment, Abhorsen understood what Andrael had known months before: that it was not Andrael herself who would complete the Clayr's prophecy, but her daughter.

The infant lay still in her wrappings, but Abhorsen had felt no death. She was not truly dead then; something had snatched her soul away. There was nothing he could do for Andrael. Even his love for her could not make him forsake the vows he had taken as an Abhorsen. But he could save his daughter.

Stunned and grieving, though no such emotion showed on his face, he approached the gypsies. He baptized the lifeless body of his child with the name her mother had chosen, and then he stepped into Death and retrieved her tiny soul.

By the looks on their faces when the child suddenly returned to life, the gypsies had clearly deduced what Abhorsen was.

"You are… you are…" whispered the midwife.

"A necromancer?" said Abhorsen, "Only of a sort. I loved the woman who lies here." He gestured back toward Andrael's still-lifeless body, and felt grief grip his heart anew.

Guilt tore at him. He should have protected her better. Should have sent her across the Wall as soon as he knew she was pregnant. Should have let the Clayr take her in. Should have left her back in Sindle, all those years ago. It would have been so easy to set her on a path to a better destination than this.

But he was reminded of something his aunt had said: Abhorsens don't choose their path. What choice had he had but to take up his ancestors' crusade? His blood had determined his destiny even before he had been born. But Andrael hadn't been bound by any such obligations. She had chosen, with full knowledge and wisdom, this path that she must have known would lead to her untimely death. She had chosen it out of bravery, out of virtue, and, of course, out of love.

Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker? It was more than a simple platitude. In the end, choice made all the difference. Who was he to question her choice, to think he could have changed her mind? She had chosen to remain by his side, and he could only love her the more for it.

"She would have lived if she had loved another," he said.

"But she did not."

Author's Note: Here it is! The actual real, real ending. It's funny how my fics tend to come from plot bunnies I get after fixating on one or two lines. This whole fic came from me thinking too much about the line at the end of this chapter.

Thanks so much for reading! Please review, and tune in next time I get the urge to write Sabriel fanfiction. I'm sure it won't be long!