The sunshine was harsh to their eyes, for it was surprisingly only a little past noon. They stumbled out onto the marble steps of the cave, blinking like noal animals prematurely flushed out of an underground warren.
Sabriel looked around at the quiet, sunlit trees, the placid expanse of grass, the clogged fountain.
Everything seemed so normal, so far removed from the crazed and twisted chamber of horrors that was the reservoir, deep beh their feet.
She looked at the sky, too, losing focus in the blue, retreating lines of clouds just edging about the fuzzy periphery of her vision. My father is dead, she thought. Gone forever . . .
「The road winds around the south-western part of Palace Hill,」 a voice said, somewhere near her, beyond the blueness.
「What?」
「The road. Up to the West Yard.」
It was Touchstoalking. Sabriel closed her eyes, told herself to trate, to get a grip on the here and now. She opened her eyes and looked at Touchstone.
He was a mess. Face blood-streaked from his bleeding lip, hair wet, plastered flat, armor and clothes darkly sodden. Water dripped down the sword he still held out, ao the ground.
「You didn』t tell me you were a Prince,」 Sabriel said, in a versational tone. She might have been enting on the weather. Her voice sourange in her own ears, but she didn』t have the energy to do anything about it.
「I』m not,」 Touchstone replied, shrugging. He looked up at the sky while he spoke. 「The Queen was my mother, but my father was an obscure northern noble, who 『took up with her』 a few years after her sort』s death. He was killed in a hunting act before I was born . . . Look, shouldn』t we be going? To the West Yard?」
「I suppose so,」 Sabriel said dully. 「Father said there will be a Paperwing waiting for us there, and the Clayr, to tell us where to go.」
「I see,」 said Touchstone. He came closer, and peered at Sabriel』s vat eyes, then took her uing and oddly floppy arm, and steered her towards the line of beech trees that marked a path to the western end of the park. Sabriel walked obediently, increasing her pace as Touchstone sped up, till they were practically jogging. Touchstone ushing on her arm, with many backward glances; Sabriel moving with a sleepwalker』s jerky animation.
A few hundred yards from the oral caves, the beeches gave way to more lawn, and a road started up the side of Palace Hill, switchbag twice to the top.
The road was well paved, but the flagstones had pushed up, or sunk down, over two decades without maintenance, and there were some quite deep ruts and holes. Sabriel caught her foot in one and she almost fell, Touchstone just catg her. But this small shock seemed to break her from the effects of the larger shock, and she found a new alertness cutting through her dumb despair.
「Why are we running?」
「Those sgers are following us,」
Touchstone replied shortly, pointing back through the park. 「The ones who had the children at the gate.」
Sabriel looked where he pointed and, sure enough, there were figures slowly moving through the beech-lined path. All nihere, close together, laughing and talking.
They seemed fident Sabriel and Touchstone could not escape them, and their mood looked to be that of casual beaters, easily driving their stupid prey to a definite end. One of them saw Sabriel and Touchstog and used a gesture that distance made unclear, but robably obse. Laughter carried to them, born