“Yes . . .” said Lirael.

It was true she could feel the Dead all around, with that strange sense she had not known she possessed for much of her life. She narrowed her eyes and tried to sort through the different sensations, for that sense was something beyond sight and hearing, touch and smell, but it drew upon them all. There was the hint of something more powerful amid all the Dead about them, but it was a fading trace, like the scent of smoke from a fire extinguished some time before.

“Has Chlorr gone deeper into Death?” asked Lirael. She hoped the slight quaver in her voice was not apparent. She was quite prepared to go on if it was necessary. She only hoped it wasn’t.

“No,” said Sabriel. “I think she was too fast for us, and went sideways and then back toward Life. But to do that . . .”

She stopped talking and looked around again, intent upon the placid though still treacherous river. Lirael watched her, once again marveling that the famous Abhorsen, Queen of the Old Kingdom and the subject of so many stories that were already becoming legends, was also her relatively newly discovered half-sister. A twenty-years-older half-sister, though Lirael felt that after the events of the summer past, she was no longer so young herself.

“To do that,” repeated Sabriel, “Chlorr must be anchored in Life.”

“Anchored in Life?” asked Lirael, startled. Chlorr of the Mask had been an ancient necromancer until she was physically slain by Sabriel. But she had not gone beyond the Ninth Gate, instead becoming a very powerful Greater Dead creature, a thing of fire and shadow that needed no flesh to inhabit out in the living world.

“I destroyed the shape she wore,” said Sabriel. “But even at that time I wondered. She was very old, hundreds of years old. I could feel that age, a leaden weight within the far younger skin . . .”

She stopped talking and turned about in a circle, sniffing, her eyes narrowed. Lirael looked around too, listening to the faint sounds of movement in the river, sounds that would normally be obscured by the rush of the current.

“There are various ways to extend a life,” continued Sabriel, after a moment. “I was too busy to consider which she had used, and became busier still, as you know. But now I think she must be connected to some anchor in Life. That is why she did not fully obey my bells, and did not die the final death.”

“But how . . .” stammered Lirael. “How could she do that?”

“There are a number of methods, all of them foul,” mused Sabriel. “Perhaps . . . I must tell you how Kerrigor did so, and there are passages from the Book of the Dead which speak to the point, though it may not show those pages to you. As always, it has its own ideas of when the reader is ready . . .”