Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1: Like a Puppet
Chapter 2: Lukrasta
Chapter 3: Farmer Boy
Chapter 4: A Council of War
Chapter 5: The Haunted Attics
Chapter 6: A Little Detour
Chapter 7: The God-Maker
Chapter 8: The Dead Prisoners
Chapter 9: An Anvil of Pain
Chapter 10: Beaten and Controlled
Chapter 11: Endless Nightmares
Chapter 12: Shape-Shifting
Chapter 13: Blood and Spittle
Chapter 14: Prisoner of the Kobalos
Chapter 15: The Shameful Death
Chapter 16: Pause for Thought
Chapter 17: The Earth Witch
Chapter 18: Grimalkin’s Plans
Chapter 19: The Final Winter
Chapter 20: The Space Between Worlds
Chapter 21: A Globule of Acid
Chapter 22: Poison
Chapter 23: The Earth Screamed
Chapter 24: White String
Chapter 25: Wolf Meat
Chapter 26: Not Safe Anywhere
Chapter 27: The Body in the Sack
Chapter 28: The Promise
Chapter 29: The Butcher God
Chapter 30: The Night Attack
Chapter 31: Mirrors
Chapter 32: The Winter House
Chapter 33: The Round Loaf
Chapter 34: Toppling Like a Tree
Chapter 35: Boy of Tears
Glossary of the Kobalos World
About the Author
Also by Joseph Delaney
Sneak Preview
Copyright
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BOOK ONE:
THE SPOOK’S APPRENTICE
BOOK TWO:
THE SPOOK’S CURSE
BOOK THREE:
THE SPOOK’S SECRET
BOOK FOUR:
THE SPOOK’S BATTLE
BOOK FIVE:
THE SPOOK’S MISTAKE
BOOK SIX:
THE SPOOK’S SACRIFICE
BOOK SEVEN:
THE SPOOK’S NIGHTMARE
BOOK EIGHT:
THE SPOOK’S DESTINY
BOOK NINE:
SPOOK’S: I AM GRIMALKIN
BOOK TEN:
THE SPOOK’S BLOOD
BOOK ELEVEN:
SPOOK’S: SLITHER’S TALE
BOOK TWELVE:
SPOOK’S: ALICE
BOOK THIRTEEN:
THE SPOOK’S REVENGE
THE SPOOK’S STORIES:
WITCHES
THE SPOOK’S BESTIARY
THE SEVENTH APPRENTICE
A NEW DARKNESS
ARENA 13
THE DARK ARMY
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 10146 7
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Penguin Random House Company
This ebook edition published 2016
Copyright © Joseph Delaney, 2016
Cover illustration copyright © Two Dots, 2016
Interior illustrations copyright © David Wyatt, 2014
Extract from The Dark Assassin © Joseph Delaney, 2016
First Published in Great Britain
The Bodley Head 9780370332239 2016
The right of Joseph Delaney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
For Marie
We face a dark army, but its whole is greater than just the Kobalos military might, and far larger than the terrible battle-entities that they have created.
It includes the gods who support them – deities such as Golgoth, the Lord of Winter, who will blast the green from the Earth and create a road of ice along which their warriors may glide to victory.
Grimalkin
ABOUT AN HOUR after dark, Jenny began to climb the spiral steps that led to the tallest of the high eastern turrets. She was slightly breathless, but it was not just because of the exertion of the steep climb.
She was nervous. Her palms were sweating and she could feel a weakness in her knees. The attic she was heading for was haunted.
She was only an apprentice and it would be many years before she’d become a spook. Was she taking on too much? she wondered.
It was cold, and her breath was steaming from her nostrils. Step after step she forced herself upwards.
Jenny was carrying a lantern; one pocket was filled with salt and the other with iron; additionally she had tied the silver chain around her waist and was also gripping a rowan staff. She was ready for any threat from the dark.
The way to deal with ghosts was to talk to them – to try and persuade them to go to the light – but Jenny wasn’t taking any chances. In this cold northern land, so far from the County, who knew what she might encounter? Ghosts might be very different here. She felt better with her pockets full and a weapon in her hand.
She reached the stout wooden attic door and tried one of the eight big keys on the heavy bunch. She was lucky: although the lock was stiff, the second key turned.
The door creaked open on rusty hinges, the bottom juddering towards her over the flags as she dragged it open. It had swollen with the damp and probably hadn’t been opened for many years.
Jenny took a deep breath to steady her nerves and stepped into the room. She was a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter with the gift of sensitivity to the dark; instantly she sensed that something threatening was nearby. She raised the lantern high and examined her surroundings: a small room, the wooden panelling stained with patches of fungus, and the table and two chairs were covered in a thick layer of dust. Another door was directly ahead of her, no doubt leading to the main chamber.
She shivered. It was cold enough to make her glad of her sheepskin jacket. But the worst thing was the smell. This was just about one of the stinkiest places she’d ever been in. Back in the County, she’d once walked out onto the Morecambe Bay sands to see what a crowd of people were staring at. There’d been a shoal of huge fish washed up on the beach. They’d been dead for some time and they stank. What she smelled now was similar, but there was some kind of living animal smell mixed in. It was a bit like walking into a stable of sweating horses and sodden sawdust. Then there was a third element to the mix – a hint of burning flesh and a taste of sulphur on her tongue.
By the yellow light of the lantern she saw a big spider high on the wall above the inner door. As she approached, the creature scuttled off towards a huge web in the corner.
There was no lock – just a metal handle. She turned it and tried to open the door by pushing it away from her. There was resistance so she reversed direction, pulling it smoothly outwards.
Her sense of a threat from the dark was growing.
The lantern illuminated what had once been someone’s opulent living quarters, now ruined by damp and neglect. Three huge fireplaces gaped like monstrous mouths, their rusty metal grates filled with ashes. Water dripped from the ceiling onto a rusty chandelier. There were the remnants of fine carpets on the floor; now they were damp, dirty and mildewed.
Then something unexpected caught her attention: four couches at the centre of the room formed a square, facing inwards towards something very unusual – a dark circular hole about ten feet in diameter. It was ringed with stones – someone had left a wine glass precariously balanced there. It looked as if the slightest disturbance would send it plummeting down into the darkness. The stones themselves glistened with water.
Jenny approached the ring of stones and gazed down into the dark hole, holding the lantern over it. It looked like a well. Was there water at the bottom?
Then Jenny realized that there was something impossible about what she was seeing: how could it be a well?
She was standing in an attic right at the top of a turret. There were rooms below. Directly beneath them in the palace was a kitchen and then, on the lowest level, the second largest throne room where Prince Stanislaw, the ruler of this land, received petitions, held meetings and dispensed justice.
She had been given a tour of this part of the castle a day or so earlier. If this dark shaft ran through the turret rooms and then down into the ground, then there would have had to be some sort of circular stone structure, like a chimney, in each of the large rooms near the ground. Surely she would have noticed such a thing?
Except for the sound of her muffled footsteps across the damp carpet and the water dripping onto the chandelier, the room was quiet. But Jenny could hear something new: a trickling, as if water was being poured into some small vessel.
She stared at the wine glass. It was slowly filling with red wine. A thin stream was falling into the glass but there was no visible source for the liquid. Was it being poured by an invisible hand?
A second later an unmistakable metallic odour told her that she was wrong about the liquid. It wasn’t wine. It was blood.
Jenny watched in fearful fascination as the glass slowly filled. The blood reached the brim and then spilled over onto the stone. The droplets began to steam, and the sudden sharp stench made her heave. As she watched, the blood in the glass began to bubble.
Then the vessel wobbled and fell into the dark shaft.
Jenny counted to ten but there was no splash, no sound at all. The shaft appeared to be bottomless.
The room had been dank and cold, but now it seemed to be growing warmer. Steam began to rise from the circle of wet stones.
Her sense of danger increased. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and her fingertips were tingling. These reactions told her that this attic contained something far worse than a poor soul needing to be coaxed towards the light. She had hoped to demonstrate her bravery and prove her competence to become a spook. She had to learn to cope alone.
Terror gripped her. She sensed that there was something really bad here; something big and dangerous; something that wanted to kill her.
Jenny stepped away from the circle of stones, away from the couches, pressing her back against the wall.
From the depths below, something enormous took a breath. It was so vast that the air it sucked in rushed past Jenny with the force of a gale, slamming the inner door shut with a bang. The blast made her stagger forward onto her knees before it swirled away down the dark shaft towards an unseen mouth and cavernous lungs.
She dropped the lantern and was plunged into total darkness.
Jenny cried out in terror as a monstrous glowing shape bulged up out of the vast impossible space and hovered in the air above it. Six glowing ruby-red eyes stared towards her; eyes set deep within a bulbous head.
When it exhaled, the breath of this creature – whatever it was – felt hot and putrid; there was a stench of decay, of dead things that still slithered or crawled in a subterranean darkness.
Then tentacles were coiling and writhing, reaching out towards her, intending to twine about her and drag her back down into that dark impossible hole.
She would never live to become a spook now.
She would die here alone in the darkness.
YESTERDAY WAS THE worst day of my life.
It was the day that Thomas Ward, the Chipenden Spook, my master, died.
Tom should have been back in the County fighting the dark, dealing with ghosts, ghasts, witches and boggarts. We should have been visiting places such as Priestown, Caster, Poulton, Burnley and Blackburn. I should have spent time in the Chipenden library and garden being trained as a spook’s apprentice. I should have been practising digging boggart pits and improving my skills with a silver chain.
Instead we followed the witch assassin, Grimalkin, on a long doomed journey north towards the lands of the Kobalos. They’re barbaric non-human warriors with a thick hide of fur and faces like wolves. They plan to make war on the human race; they intend to kill all the men and boys and enslave the females.
One of their warriors, a shaiksa assassin with deadly fighting skills, had been visiting the river, the divide between the territories of men and Kobalos. He’d been issuing challenges, then fighting human opponents in single combat, killing his adversaries with ease. But the holy men of this land, the magowie, had been visited by a winged figure – a figure who had the appearance of an angel and who had made a prophecy:
One day soon a human will come who will defeat the Kobalos warrior. After his victory he will lead the combined armies of the principalities to victory!
Hearing of this prophecy, Grimalkin had formulated a plan. It was a plan that cost Tom his life.
Grimalkin’s scheme was for Tom Ward to fight and defeat the warrior and then lead an army into Kobalos lands so that she could learn of their magical and military abilities.
Tom had indeed defeated the warrior, but the Kobalos’s dying act had been to pierce Tom’s body with his sabre.
So Tom Ward had died too.
That was yesterday.
Today we are going to bury him.
Tom’s coffin rested on the grass in the open. Prince Stanislaw, who ruled Polyznia, the largest of the principalities bordering Kobalos territory, stood beside it, flanked by two of his guards. He nodded towards Grimalkin and me, and then beckoned four of his men forward. They hefted the coffin up onto their shoulders.
He and this armed escort were with us to do honour to Tom. I wished they didn’t have to be here; I wanted to take Tom back to the County where his old master was buried and his family still lived on their farm.
I glanced sideways at the prince – a big man with short grey hair, a large nose and close-set eyes. He was in his fifties, I guessed, and hadn’t an ounce of fat on his body. His intelligent eyes looked sad now.
He and his warriors had been impressed by Tom’s fighting skill. Despite suffering a mortal wound, he had slain the Kobalos warrior, something that the prince’s own champions had been unable to do.
As we trudged up towards the place where Tom was to be buried, thunder crashed overhead, and soon torrential rain had soaked us to the skin. Grimalkin gripped my shoulder. I suppose she meant to be comforting – in so far as someone as wild and cruel as a witch assassin can be. But Tom’s death had been brought about by her machinations and anger began to build within me. Her grip was firm to the point of hurting, but I shrugged her off and took a step nearer to the open grave.
I glanced at the headstone and began to read what had been carved upon it:
HERE LIETH PRINCE THOMAS OF CASTER,
A BRAVE WARRIOR
WHO FELL IN COMBAT
BUT TRIUMPHED WHERE OTHERS FAILED
The lie we had created – that Tom was a prince – had gone too far; and now here it was written upon his gravestone. It made my stomach turn. Tom was a young spook who had fought the dark, and this should have been acknowledged. This shouldn’t have happened, I thought bitterly. He deserved the truth.
But this again had been Grimalkin’s doing. Tom had needed to pose as a prince because the armies of the principalities would not follow a commoner.
I watched as a hooded magowie, one of their priests, prayed for Tom, rain dripping from the end of his nose. The smell of wet soil was very strong. Soon it would cover Tom’s remains.
Then the prayers were over and the gravediggers began to shovel wet earth down upon the coffin. I glanced back at Grimalkin and saw that she was grinding her teeth. She seemed more angry than sad; but I was churning with mixed emotions too.
Suddenly the men stopped working and looked up. There was movement and light in the air high above us. I gasped as I spotted a winged figure hovering far above the grave; it glowed with a silver light, its fluttering wings huge.
It was the same angel-like being that had hovered over the hill while the three magowie made their prophecy, foretelling the coming of a champion to defeat the Shaiksa assassin and lead humans across the river to victory.
Suddenly it folded its white wings and dropped towards us like a stone, coming to a stop less than thirty feet above our heads. Now I could make out a beautiful face that shone with pale light. Everyone was gazing upwards now, gasping in astonishment.
There was a noise from the grave but, fascinated by the winged figure, I continued to look up. It was only when the sound came again that I glanced down.
At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I wasn’t the only person staring down into the grave. I saw that the casket was slightly tilted, and the sodden earth that covered it was sliding away to reveal the wet wooden lid.
Grimalkin hissed in anger and stared up at the winged being. I could understand her annoyance at the interference. Couldn’t Tom even be left to be buried in peace? But then I saw that the coffin was moving. What could be causing that?
I hardly dared to hope . . . Could it be that Tom was alive . . .?
With a jerk, the coffin rose up into the air above the grave and began to spin, spraying mud and droplets of water in all directions. The corner caught one of the gravediggers and knocked him backwards into the waiting mound of earth.
I stared open-mouthed as the coffin slowly rose upwards. Grimalkin rushed forward, stretching out her arms as if to grab it. But, spinning faster and faster, it eluded her grasp and whirled towards the winged figure. I heard another hiss of anger from Grimalkin – but it was lost in an ear-splitting boom of thunder that set my teeth on edge.
Suddenly the heavens were split with intense light – not the sheet lightning we had experienced so far: this was a jagged fork of blue lightning that seemed to come from the winged figure. It struck Tom’s coffin with a crack that hurt my ears.
It had to be something supernatural – a wielding of dark magic. Judging by her reactions, it certainly wasn’t Grimalkin’s doing. But who was responsible?
The coffin immediately disintegrated, splinters of wood falling towards us. I quickly retreated, shielding my head with my arms, bumping into people in my haste to get clear.
Some of the pieces splashed into the water at the bottom of the empty grave; others fell around me.
When I looked up again, Tom’s corpse was spinning above us, his arms and legs flopping and jerking, his body spiralling down towards the grave again. I stared at him in amazement. His eyes were closed in death; he looked like a puppet dangling from invisible controlling strings. I could hardly bear to watch: that such an indignity should be inflicted upon him!
Suddenly, far above him, the winged creature vanished like a candle flame snuffed out by a giant thumb and forefinger. Sheet lightning flashed and Tom’s corpse fell twenty feet or more into the mound of soil beside the grave.
For a moment there was absolute silence. I held my breath, stunned by what I had just witnessed, a whole range of emotions churning through me.
Then, from the corpse, we heard an unmistakable groan.
GRIMALKIN WAS THE first to reach Tom. She lifted him out of the mud and carried him in her arms like a child, pushing through the crowd and ignoring even the prince. She was hurrying back towards the camp. I ran after her, calling her name, but she never even glanced back.
Soon we were back in the tent where we had washed the corpse – which now seemed very much alive. Grimalkin laid Tom on the pallet and covered him with a blanket. He was breathing and giving the occasional moan, but he didn’t open his eyes.
‘Tom! Tom!’ I cried, kneeling beside him, but Grimalkin pushed me away.
‘Leave him, child! He needs to sleep deeply,’ she commanded, giving me a glimpse of her pointy teeth. She seemed concerned, but angry too. Being a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, one of my gifts is that of empathy – but it didn’t work with the witch assassin. Perhaps she had magical barriers in place.
Soon Prince Stanislaw, escorted by four guards, came to see Tom; he had a brief animated conversation with Grimalkin in the local language, Losta; she didn’t bother to translate for me so I don’t know exactly what was said – though sometimes I can read people’s thoughts, and the prince’s mind was open to me. He was excited and astonished and filled with rapture, believing that he had witnessed a miracle. He was happy for Tom too; happy that he still lived, and fervently wished for a full recovery. But beneath all these thoughts was calculation: already he was anticipating using Tom as a figurehead to rally more troops and launch an attack upon the Kobalos.
After the departure of the prince we were left alone in the tent. Grimalkin sat beside Tom, staring down into his face while I paced back and forth in agitation, my mind racing with what I had seen. I longed to ask Grimalkin how he was doing, but her expression was forbidding. At last I blurted out my question.
‘Will he get better?’ I asked. ‘Is it possible?’
‘Come here, child,’ Grimalkin told me. ‘Look at this . . .’
I approached the low trestle table where Tom lay. She pulled back the sheet and pointed to the place where the Kobalos’s sabre had transfixed his body. I had seen scales around Tom’s wound before, but now it had closed right up, sealed with scales.
‘It’s a miracle!’ I exclaimed. ‘The angel has restored him to life!’
Grimalkin shook her head, looking nothing like her usual confident self. ‘It was not a miracle and that creature was no angel. In part, the healing came about because of the lamia blood that courses through his veins – something that he inherited from his mother. But he was certainly dead, and restoring him to life required a dark magic so powerful that everyone who witnessed it should be afraid.’
Lamia witches were shape-shifters. In their ‘domestic’ form they had the appearance of human women but for the line of green and yellow scales that ran the length of their spines. In their ‘feral’ shape they scuttled around on all fours with sharp teeth and talons, crunching bones and drinking the blood of their victims.
I knew that Tom’s mam had been a healer and a midwife but to my astonishment Grimalkin had revealed that she had also been a lamia. She had passed on to Tom the ability to heal himself. But surviving death was something far beyond that.
‘Who used the magic?’ I asked.
Grimalkin didn’t answer. Was she even listening to me? I wondered. She seemed to have retreated into her own private world. I heard a murmuring outside, and rather than repeating my question I went over and lifted the tent flap. Scores of warriors stood outside, staring at the tent.
I returned to Tom’s makeshift bed. He was breathing slowly, in a deep sleep, but looked as if he might open his eyes at any moment. I wondered fearfully if he could really be himself after such a trauma? He might have been tipped into insanity or have no recollection of his former life.
‘There are ranks of warriors outside. What do they want?’ I asked Grimalkin.
She sighed, drew back the blanket and inspected Tom’s wound again. She spoke so quietly that I had to lean closer to catch her words. ‘They want this sleeping “prince” to lead them across the river and destroy the Kobalos. They have seen Tom defeat the Shaiksa; now they have witnessed his return from the dead, an even greater accomplishment. They want what I wanted. We have reached the position I hoped for all along. But someone else has brought us to this point; someone who had already planted the seeds of this harvest months before we arrived here with Tom; someone who has seen the larger picture of events and schemed to bring about this very situation.
‘Months?’ I asked. How could she know this?
‘The winged being has been appearing to the magowie for some time. It has been controlled by someone who hides in the shadows so that I cannot see him.’
‘Do you know who it is?’ I asked, suddenly afraid. I had thought Grimalkin was the great schemer, but now, it seemed, there was someone too powerful for even her to detect.
‘I know only one person capable of such powerful dark magic,’ she said. ‘A human mage I have encountered before. His name is Lukrasta, and he once served the Fiend. His purpose now is to ensure the survival of humanity and the destruction of the Kobalos.’
‘Tom told me a little of Lukrasta – isn’t he the dark mage his friend Alice now works with?’
‘Yes, that is the one,’ the witch assassin admitted, her face grim. Her mouth twitched, and I wondered if she was afraid . . .
‘But don’t we all want the same outcome, then?’ I asked. Surely this mage Lukrasta would be a valuable ally.
‘Lukrasta is indeed fighting on our side against the Kobalos – but sometimes the means he uses are too terrible, and the goal is not worth it,’ Grimalkin replied, shaking her head. ‘I watched the final stage of Tom’s struggle with the assassin very carefully. He fought perfectly, exactly as I had trained him – but as he delivered the killing blow, he made an elementary mistake. His stance allowed the Shaiksa to deliver the killing thrust.’
‘But the Kobalos warrior was highly skilled. Are you sure Tom made a mistake? Anybody can make a mistake in the heat of battle, surely?’
‘I am certain, child,’ Grimalkin retorted angrily, showing her sharp teeth. ‘Tom Ward would never have made such an elementary mistake of his own volition. I think his actions were influenced by some magical force. He had to die so that these warriors could witness his resurrection; they are now more likely to follow him into battle obediently and without question. The winged creature and the prophecies made by the magowie . . . it all fits together only too well. We have been used as part of a clever scheme, pawns in a much larger game.
‘Think what has been done and how it has been done!’ she spat. ‘Tom has suffered to meet the needs of this mage. He died a painful death and perhaps an even more painful resurrection. We are all expendable. Tom Ward and Lukrasta are enemies. Last year they fought, and Tom won. There is something cruel and vindictive about what has been done here – in hurting Tom, the mage has exacted a painful revenge over his rival.’
‘How is Lukrasta Tom’s rival? Is it because of Alice? Does Tom still care for Alice?’ I hoped he didn’t – it couldn’t be good for a spook to be so close to a witch.
Grimalkin smiled bitterly. ‘Alice and Tom were very close – he is hurt by her absence. Now she is closer to Lukrasta than she ever was to Tom. Yes, they are truly rivals for the friendship of Alice.’
For a while I did not reply. I’d never seen the witch assassin so upset before. I could feel myself wilting under the fierce heat of her anger. Then at last I screwed up my courage and asked the question that had been bothering me.
‘How could Tom have been manipulated by a magical force during his battle with the Shaiksa? He was wielding the Starblade that you forged for him. You both thought that made him invulnerable to magic.’
‘It should have done so. I believed that it would protect against any dark magic intended to harm him – magic wielded by both humans and Kobalos. That is what worries me. The magic used against Tom was more powerful than the blade. I suspect that Lukrasta and Alice combined their magical power to achieve that.’ Grimalkin’s hands were trembling slightly – but was it from fear or anger?
After a while she spoke again, her tone softer and friendlier. ‘You look tired, girl – you have been through a lot. I will watch over Tom. Go back to our tent and sleep. I will ask the prince to provide you with an escort through the camp.’
I hesitated. I was reluctant to leave Tom. I really wanted to be there if he woke up, but Grimalkin was staring at me, and I was forced to look away from her fierce gaze.
Within the hour I was back at our own little camp, watched over by a couple of the prince’s guards. I was tired, but I fed and watered the horses before crawling under my blanket. Almost immediately I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
It was late morning when I awoke and went outside. I saw that the guards were gone, as had most of the nearby tents. There was no sign of human activity.
I was puzzled and tempted to investigate further but the horses badly need to be exercised, so I put aside my curiosity and dealt with their needs first, riding them along the riverbank. It was a fine bright morning and I enjoyed the gallop. I was so pleased that Tom seemed to have a chance of recovering, but that was balanced by what Grimalkin had told me of Lukrasta and Alice. How could Alice be Tom’s friend and yet conspire to cause him such pain?
As I approached the camp again, I saw the witch assassin striding towards me between the remaining tents.
‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.
‘They’ve set off for a castle belonging to Prince Stanislaw. We are to stay there for a time while we strengthen our forces and prepare to cross the river into the Kobalos lands.’
Her words filled me with utter dismay. I couldn’t believe that they were still planning the attack. I’d been hoping that Tom would be able to travel back to the County.
‘What about Tom? Is he conscious?’
‘No, he is still in a very deep sleep. He is being carried there on a cart, watched over by the prince’s guards. We need to strike camp and follow.’
The journey to the castle took us through a great forest of tall spruce and pine trees. How I longed to be back amongst the oaks and sycamores of the County. When Tom recovered he would surely need a period of convalescence. He certainly wouldn’t be strong enough to ride at the head of an army. Grimalkin had talked of crossing the river to attack the Kobalos, but perhaps I could persuade him to go home? I would certainly try my best.
Grimalkin was not best pleased when the castle finally came into view. ‘This is no place to position an armed camp! It will be impossible to defend!’ she exclaimed.
Set on high ground, rising out of the haze from hundreds of campfires, the castle was a beautiful and impressive sight, surrounded by pine trees and wild meadows. However, it lacked the moat and high defensive walls of castles that I’d seen back in the County.
‘No doubt Prince Stanislaw uses it as a base to hunt boar and deer,’ she continued. ‘It’s a place to entertain his nobles and other princelings. We should have gone further south, closer to the capital. Our Kobalos enemies might seize the initiative and attack first.’
I had only seen one of the Kobalos so far – the assassin that Tom had defeated in single combat. Yet I knew that many of their warriors dwelt across the river, and that even greater numbers lived in the great Kobalos city called Valkarky. Their intention was to kill all human men and boys and enslave the women. The threat they posed was terrifying.
They had their powerful new god, Talkus, whose birth had encouraged them to invade human territory.
He had also drawn other Old Gods to his side.
The most formidable of these allies was Golgoth, the Lord of Winter who shared the Kobalos’ love of the frozen wastes; he was a god who threatened to bring ice and snow to the whole world creating a new Age of Ice. These gods, the Kobalos and their battle-entities were the dark army that we faced.
When we reached the castle, we were treated with courtesy and our horses were fed and watered. Somehow they found room for them in the crowded stables. The castle was very full as well. The rulers of the other principalities had brought their warriors to join the cause and resist the expected Kobalos attack, and each had been given quarters there. The consequence was that I had to share a small room in the southern turret with Grimalkin.
Still, our room had two narrow beds. I was grateful for that because in sleep Grimalkin can be terrifying. Sometimes she cries out as if in agony or speaks harsh angry words in some foreign language; most scary of all is the way she sometimes grinds her teeth together and growls deep in her throat.
Time passed slowly and I moped in my room, making notes on what had happened and writing this account in Tom’s notebook. Occasionally I broke the tedium with a brisk walk in the cold, pacing back and forth within the courtyard. I really wanted to explore the grounds, but the soldiers camped there were loud and boisterous, and I avoided them.
Grimalkin seemed to spend all her time by Tom’s bedside, but when I tried to see him, she wouldn’t let me enter the room.
Then, on the third morning, she came and told me that Tom was conscious and wished to speak to me.
So this will be my final entry in his notebook.
I am happy to return it to him, but I wonder what will happen now. Will he want to go home? I really hope so. I am about to find out.
ALICE TURNED AND smiled at me. We’d just cooked two rabbits in the embers of our campfire. Now we were eating them, the tender meat almost melting in our mouths.
I smiled back. She was a really pretty girl with nice brown eyes, dark hair and high cheekbones. It was easy to forget that she’d been trained in witchcraft by a witch called Bony Lizzie. But we’d just survived a terrible threat from the dark and Alice had helped me – so rather than imprison her in a pit, the Spook had given her another chance. I was taking her to stay with her aunt at Staumin, to the west of the County.
We finished the rabbits and sat in silence. It was one of those comfortable silences where you didn’t need to speak. I felt relaxed and happy; it was good to just sit there next to her, staring into the warm embers of the fire.
But suddenly Alice did something really strange. She reached across and held my hand.
We still didn’t speak and stayed like that for a long time. I looked up at the stars. I didn’t want to break away but I was all mixed up. My left hand was holding her right hand and I felt guilty. I felt as if I was holding hands with the dark – I knew the Spook wouldn’t like it.
There was no way I could get away from the truth. It was very likely that Alice was going to be a witch one day. It was then that I remembered what Mam had said about her – that she’d always be somewhere in between, neither wholly good nor wholly bad.
But wasn’t that true of all of us? Not one of us was perfect.
So I didn’t take my hand away. I just sat there, one part of me enjoying holding her hand, which was comforting after all that had happened, while the other part was overcome with guilt . . .
All at once I found myself lying in my bed. My heart sank like a stone.
It had all been a dream about what had happened years earlier during the first months of my apprenticeship.
I’d enjoyed those moments with Alice, but now I remembered more recent events. Our close friendship had lasted years and I’d truly loved her – it was Alice who had brought it to an end. She’d betrayed me and gone off with the mage, Lukrasta. The pain of it was still as fresh now as the moment it happened.
Alice had become a witch. She had gone to the dark. I had lost her for ever.
I looked at the weak sunlight streaming into the room and shivered. They still hadn’t returned my clothes and, pulling the heavy woollen gown about me, I left my bed for the first time since regaining consciousness. Once again I remembered the sudden pain as the sabre entered my flesh; I remembered falling into the darkness of death.
There was an ache in my belly and the floorboards were cold. My knees trembled as I walked unsteadily over to the window seat and peered down.
This castle was the most northerly seat of Prince Stanislaw of Polyznia. Grimalkin had already told me that it could not be defended. She seemed to be finding fault with everything. I had tried to remain calm in her presence but I felt increasingly bitter at the way she had manipulated me, bringing me to this northern principality without telling me that her intention was for me to fight the Shaiksa assassin. Her scheme had led to my death.
I looked through the window at an army made up of the prince’s own blue-jacketed forces and those from the other northern principalities that bordered the Kobalos territory. I could see part of their camp from the window. Their fires had created a brown haze that hung over the meadows between the castle and the forest.
Reinforcements were also joining us from the larger Germanic kingdoms immediately to the south. We would need every man we could get but there would never be enough of them.
Somewhere across the Shanna River, two hours to the north, were our enemies – the Kobalos army, which was many times the size of our own. They could attack at any time.
They were a fierce race of bestial creatures, and their new god Talkus had increased the power of their mages and fuelled this war. He might now be the most powerful entity of the dark. That was why I had let Grimalkin persuade me to travel here – to gather information that might help to defeat them long before they fought their way to the sea and threatened the County.
We had destroyed the Fiend only to find something worse taking his place.
Following the predictions of the magowie, the wise men who served the rulers of the principalities, thousands of men-at-arms had converged on this castle and now, because of my victory over the assassin, I was supposed to lead them. But I was a spook, not a prince. I didn’t want to lead them to their deaths.
I sat there with the sun on my face; its rays felt warm through the glass. But I knew that beyond these walls the air was chilly – soon it would be winter. I wanted to go home before the weather closed in and made that impossible.
The days were getting shorter and in just a few hours the sun would set. I didn’t welcome the night. Darkness made me uneasy now. The sound of a mouse scratching under the floorboards set my heart racing and my nerves jumping with anxiety. My apprenticeship had gradually allowed me to overcome such fears, but all at once it was as if all my training had been for nothing.
How could I function as a spook in this condition? How long would it be before I returned to full physical and mental health? Had I truly died? Sometimes everything seemed unreal. I had to touch the stone walls and press my fingers against the wooden door in order to convince myself that they were solid. Was I actually back in the world or really still dead and suffering in the dark?
By an effort of will I forced myself not to dwell on such thoughts. Grimalkin tells me that I was certainly dead – but if so, I could remember nothing of it.
At the moment I struck the blow that gave me victory, I was aware of the Shaiksa assassin’s sabre thrusting towards my body. I tried to twist away. I could have done it – I should have avoided that fatal counterstroke – but my lower body was seized with a sudden paralysis.
I remember feeling a terrible pain, then looking down and seeing the blade, knowing that I couldn’t hope to survive such a wound. I was cold and numb and terribly afraid. I didn’t want to die.
Grimalkin believes that dark magic was used against me. She suspects that it was Lukrasta; she also suspects that he orchestrated my return from death – that the winged being which tore me from my coffin was his creature. I felt angry and remembered how I defeated him in combat but then spared his life. What a fool I’d been to do so! I’d fought Lukrasta in his tower and won. His magic couldn’t work against me while I wielded the sword that Grimalkin forged.
So what had changed?