Sabriel (character)
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Sabriel is a fictional character from Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy.
[edit] Birth
Sabriel is born dead until her father, the Abhorsen (revealed in Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr to be named "Terciel"), rescues her from the arms of the Greater Dead Adept, Kerrigor. She is then sent to Wyverley College in Ancelstierre, the southern country where magic does not work but machinery does (except near the border to the Old Kingdom).
Sabriel is called to the Old Kingdom, the northern country where magic still flourishes, when she learns her father has gone missing. She sets off at once toward Abhorsen's House.
[edit] The Journey
When she reaches the house, Sabriel encounters the Abhorsen's shapeshifting servant, Mogget, who appears to her in the shape of a white cat and reluctantly decides to join her on her quest. As Sabriel is now being pursued by the agents of Kerrigor, the two of them are forced to leave via a bird-like magical flying device called a Paperwing. The Paperwing resembles a cross between an eagle and a paper airplane.
When the aircraft is chased by undead Gore Crows into a freefall, the young Abhorsen is forced to release the cat from his magically-binding collar. While Mogget stops the Paperwing, thus saving her life, Sabriel soon learns that the cat is more than he appears: he is in reality a Free Magic creature of enormous power. He nearly kills Sabriel, but she manages to re-bind him into a cat with the use of a magical ring.
The two land in Holehallow, a collection of deep sinkholes which hold the funerary ships of the Old Kingdom royal family. There, Sabriel frees a man calling himself Touchstone (whom we later learn was an Old Kingdom prince and Kerrigor's brother; Abhorsen reveals his name as Torrigan) from a two hundred-year imprisonment as a wooden figurehead.
They then head towards the capital of Belisaere, now in a sad state of decay and anarchy after two hundred years without a ruler. There, in the castle reservoir, they discover Terciel's earthly body; his spirit has been imprisoned in Death. Unfortunately, he has been in Death too long to truly live again, and he is killed when he rings the bell Astarael to hold off Kerrigor's forces. Sabriel and Touchstone are forced to flee the scene to avoid being pulled into Death with Terciel and the other undead.
After Sabriel and Touchstone learn that Kerrigor has hidden his body in Ancestierre, and after a fierce battle at Wyverley College, Sabriel manages to use the same binding ring on Kerrigor that she has used on Mogget. She is, however, extremely wounded. Before she can travel the river of Death, the spirits of past Abhorsens bid her to go back, saying she can not die until another Abhorsen appears to take her place. She wakes to find herself amid the aftermath of the Wyverly battle, her hands in Touchstone's, and as the fifty-third Abhorsen.
When Touchstone soon afterwards becomes king of the Old Kingdom, Sabriel marries him and becomes his queen. They have two children, a daughter named Ellimere, and a son, Sameth, who later plays an important role in the two sequels, Lirael and Abhorsen.
| Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series | |
|---|---|
| Novels | Sabriel • Lirael • Abhorsen • Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories |
| Characters | Chlorr of the Mask • Disreputable Dog • Kerrigor • Lirael • Mogget • Orannis • Sabriel • Terciel • Touchstone |
| Magic | The Charter • Five Great Charters • Free Magic • Nine Bright Shiners |
| Places | Ancelstierre • Death • Old Kingdom |
| Magical objects | Necromantic bells • Nehima • Paperwing |
