Sabriel (character)

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Sabriel is a fictional character from Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy.

[edit] Birth

Sabriel was born dead until her father, the Abhorsen (revealed in Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr to be named "Terciel"), rescued her from the arms of the Greater Dead Adept, Kerrigor. She was then sent to Wyverley College in Ancelstierre, the southern country where few believe in magic.

Sabriel was called to the Old Kingdom, the northern country where magic still flourished, when she learned her father had gone missing. She set off at once toward Abhorsen's House.

[edit] The Journey

When she reached the house, Sabriel encountered the Abhorsen's shapeshifting servant, Mogget, who appeared to her in the shape of a white cat and reluctantly decided to join her on her quest. As Sabriel was now being pursued by the agents of Kerrigor, the two of them were 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 was chased by undead Gore Crows into a freefall, the young Abhorsen was forced to release the cat from his magically-binding collar. While Mogget braked the Paperwing, thus saving her life, Sabriel soon learned that the cat was more than he appeared: he was in reality a Free Magic creature of enormous power. He nearly killed Sabriel, but she managed to re-bind him into a cat with the use of a magical ring.

The two had landed in Holehallow, a collection of deep sinkholes which held the funerary ships of the Old Kingdom royal family. There, Sabriel freed 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 headed towards the capital of Belisaere, now in a sad state of decay and anarchy after twenty years without a ruler. There, in the castle reservoir, they discovered Terciel's earthly body; his spirit had been imprisoned in Death. Unfortunately, he had been in Death too long to truly live again, and he was killed when he rang the bell Astarael to hold off Kerrigor's forces.

After Sabriel and Touchstone learned that Kerrigor had hidden his body in Ancestierre, and after a fierce battle at Wyverley College, Sabriel managed to use the same binding ring on Kerrigor that she had used on Mogget. She was, however, extremely wounded. Before she could travel the river of Death, the spirits of past Abhorsens bid her to go back, saying she could not die until another Abhorsen appeared 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 had two children, a daughter named Ellimere, and a son, Sameth, who later plays an important role in the two sequels, Lirael and Abhorsen.