Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) 精彩片段：
chapter xxvii
The last blocks came away slowly, pulled out by sweating, white-faced men, their hands and legs shivering, breath ragged. As soon as the way was clear, they staggered back, away from the cairn, seeking patches of sunlight to combat the dreadful chill that seemed to eat at their bones. One soldier, a dapper man with a white-blond moustache, fell down the hill, and lay retching, till stretcher-bearers ran up to take him away.
Sabriel looked at the dark hole in the cairn, and saw the faint, unsettling sheen from the bronze sarcophagus within. She felt sick too, with the hair on the back of her neck frizzing up, skin crawling. The air seemed thick with the reek of Free Magic, a hard, metallic taste in her mouth.
“We will have to spell it open,” she announced, with a sinking heart. “The sarcophagus is very strongly protected. I think . . . the best thing would be if I go in with Touchstone taking my hand, Horyse his, and so on, to form a line reinforcement of the Charter Magic. Does everyone know the Charter marks for the opening spell?”
The soldiers nodded, or said, “Yes, ma’am.”
One said, “Yes, Abhorsen.”
Sabriel looked at him. A middle-aged corporal, with the chevrons of long service on his sleeve. He seemed one of the least affected by the Free Magic.
“You can call me Sabriel, if you want,” she said, strangely unsettled by what he had called her.
The corporal shook his head. “No, Miss. I knew your dad. You’re just like him. The Abhorsen, now. You’ll make this Dead bugger— begging your pardon—wish he’d stayed properly bloody dead.”
“Thank you,” Sabriel replied, uncertainly.
She knew the corporal didn’t have the Sight— you could always tell—but his belief in her was so concrete . . .
“He’s right,” said Touchstone. He gestured for her to go in front of him, making a courtly bow.
“Let’s finish what we came to do, Abhorsen.”
Sabriel bowed back, in a motion that had almost the feel of ritual about it. The Abhorsen bowing to the King. Then she took a deep breath, her face settling into a determined mold.
Beginning to form the Charter marks of opening in her mind, she took Touchstone’s hand and advanced towards the open cairn, its dark, shadowy interior in stark contrast with the sunlit thistles and the tumbled stones. Behind her, Touchstone half-turned to take Horyse’s calloused hand as well, the Colonel’s other hand already gripping Lieutenant Aire’s, Aire gripping a Sergeant’s, the Sergeant the long-service Corporal’s, and so on down the hillside. Fourteen Charter Mages in all, if only two of the first rank.