Spook's: The Dark Army (The Starblade Chronicles) (16 page)

‘There are two possibilities,’ she told him. ‘One is that they will follow us across the river and lay siege to your cities. But I think the second is more likely. The failure of Lenklewth’s plan will have given them pause. I believe that the Kobalos will now wish to assemble an overwhelming force before making that crossing. Then they will advance until their conquest is complete.’

‘You seem certain,’ the prince said, meeting her eye.

‘I am very certain. I am a witch and have scryed it. That is their plan at the moment. It may change. If it does, I will inform you.’

He nodded. ‘What wish you to be done?’

‘The three eighteen-pounders must be brought close together facing south. Then I need a body of cavalry who are prepared to fight a rearguard action so that most of our infantry can escape. Unfortunately it will cost some of them their lives.’

‘There will be many volunteers,’ the prince assured her. ‘My men are brave. I will choose the best.’

This was what Grimalkin had always intended: to break through the enemy forces and escape back across the river.

But she had failed in her plan to gain knowledge of mage-magic: she would return empty-handed. There had been many deaths; more would follow. And it had all been for nothing.

The pain of the shaiksa’s blades still hurt but it was not as severe as the anguish in my heart. My glimpse of Alice had brought back all my confused feelings about her: the love and closeness of our friendship tainted by her betrayal of me.

IT WAS LESS
than an hour before dawn and the sky to the east was growing lighter. I was restless.

After Grimalkin had attended to my wounds I’d spoken to Jenny. She was starting to calm down after her ordeal. I intended to talk to her again later but for now I urgently needed time by myself to think things through and try to resolve my confusion about Alice.

As for myself, I had not come well through my most recent ordeal. I was more afraid of death than ever before. The experience of the pain of death had taken away some of my courage.

I walked through the trees, circling the kulad, wondering if any of us would survive the coming battle.

It was then that I heard a faint sound: music drifting on the breeze, reaching my ears from a distance. At first I thought it was a human voice. I came to a halt and listened more carefully. The leaves overhead rustled in the wind and for a moment the sound was gone. Just when I started to think I’d imagined it, the song came back louder than ever. No, it was not singing. It was some sort of instrument.

It seemed familiar. Who could be playing?

Then I finally remembered: it was the pipes of Pan, the Old God of nature and life itself.

Two years earlier, I’d encountered him in Ireland. Once you’d heard that enthralling music, you could never forget it. Why was he here? I wondered.

I tried to locate its source, and suddenly realized that it was coming from the kulad. I began to walk directly towards it, slowly at first, as if in a dream; then I felt an urge to run. I was being summoned by magic. The Starblade at my side was failing to defend me against that spell of compulsion.

There could be two reasons for that: either there was no intention to harm me or the spell was too strong even for the sword. Back in Ireland, Alice had been snatched away into the dark but Pan had returned her. He had helped us once. If it was Pan I felt sure that the Old God meant me no harm.

As I ran, I looked up at the tower looming above me. It was in darkness, but for a light flickering in the topmost window; from Lenklewth’s chamber.

I crossed the drawbridge, passed under the portcullis and walked towards the tower. There were two guards on the door. I wondered if they were aware of the music . . . Perhaps only I could hear it? I nodded to them and entered the tower. As I climbed the stairs, I noticed that the bodies of the slain had been removed for burial but there were still bloodstains on the walls and floor of each room. The music was growing ever louder and more compelling, drawing me upwards.

I began to run up the steps until I reached the outer door of the mage’s chamber. The huge bath still steamed and I looked at it warily. The skelts had vanished with the mage, but what if they’d returned and were lurking there?

I went on through the white mist and crossed the bridge to the inner door, then stepped inside, expecting to find Pan.

Pan wasn’t there but Alice was.

The first time I’d met Alice she was wearing a tattered black dress tied at the waist with a piece of string. More recently, when she’d left me and gone off with Lukrasta, she’d worn a dress of dark silk and a fine black coat trimmed with fur. Now she was wearing what I’d glimpsed when she’d saved me – a long green dress. Alice had painted her fingernails green too and wore a short fur-trimmed jacket the colour of bark. There were two small daggers at her belt; each had a green hilt, identical to that of the dagger buried in the throat of the Shaiksa assassin.

Just one thing hadn’t changed since our first meeting on the path that ran up the hill from Chipenden to the Spook’s house: Alice was still wearing her pointy shoes.

I remembered the warning issued by my master, John Gregory, at the beginning of my apprenticeship:
Watch out for the village girls. Especially any who wear pointy shoes.

It had been good advice, but I’d ignored it and got involved with Alice. A part of me wished I’d never met her.

‘It’s good to see you, Tom,’ she said, a faint smile on her lips.

I wanted to say something cutting and sarcastic, but I bit my tongue and attempted to restrain my anger. However, my feelings were too strong, and rather than thanking Alice for saving my life, I’d spoken the bitter words before I could help it.

‘Where’s your friend Lukrasta?’ I demanded.

The smile left Alice’s face and a look of anger flickered across it. Then it faded to sadness.

‘Lukrasta is dead. He was killed by the Kobalos. It’s all gone badly wrong. We tried to penetrate their city and learn the secrets of their magic, but we made the same mistake as Grimalkin. We underestimated them. They were lying in wait. I barely escaped with my own life.’

For a moment I wondered whether Alice was telling the truth but it was just a momentary doubt that the expression on her face drove away.

It was a shock to learn that Lukrasta was dead. Thoughts and feelings began to swirl around my head. First I felt a glimmer of hope: if he was dead, then perhaps Alice and I could be together again. But I was immediately overcome by fresh anger as I realized that she was only here because Lukrasta was dead!

‘So now you’ve lost him you’ve come back to me . . .’

Alice shook her head slowly. ‘I’ve come back to
help
you. I saved your life, didn’t I? I’m here to try and save you all, Tom. Without my help many of you are going to die. It ain’t possible for you all to escape. Grimalkin’s got great self-belief – she can’t imagine failing – but not even she can achieve that.’

There was silence as I mulled over what she had said, and suddenly I heard the music again. It seemed to be all around me, filling the room.

‘That music – is that Pan?’ I asked.

Alice nodded. ‘Yes, Pan’s close by. He’ll add his strength to mine to make up for the loss of Lukrasta.’

‘Do you mean Pan’s on our side?’

‘He’s on the side of life, Tom; on the side of everything that’s green; on the side of everything that springs from the Earth. The Old Gods are taking sides. Soon Talkus, the Kobalos god, will control most of ’em. The first that bowed to him was Golgoth, the Lord of Winter. He’s a lot to gain from the expansion of Valkarky and the ice spreading southwards, bringing blizzards and perpetual winter. But Pan will never give in.’

‘Grimalkin said that Talkus and Golgoth were part of the dark army that seeks to destroy us. So is Pan really part of our army? Does he really support humans?’

‘Pan wants a green world teeming with life, so he’ll fight with us – he’ll help to hold the ice back. That’s how it started, Tom. That’s how I ended up with Lukrasta.’

‘What do you mean, Alice? What did that have to do with Pan?’

‘When I went into the dark to get the Dolorous Blade, Pan was angry at my presumption at entering his domain without permission. So I had to pay a price or he wouldn’t let me leave. He made me promise that I would help him if he asked. Didn’t have any choice, did I? Otherwise I’d have been trapped in the dark for ever. So I agreed.

‘Wasn’t long before he told me what I had to do – link my powers with those of Lukrasta. I had to leave you and fight the Kobalos with the mage. You can’t break your word to one of the Old Gods; it was useless to resist. Then, when I tried the Doomdryte ritual, Lukrasta arrived, and that was the beginning of our alliance.’

The Doomdryte ritual was a reading from a grimoire of that name. If you made one mistake, mispronounced a word or hesitated, you could be destroyed. Alice had risked that to gain power to fight the Fiend. But it was Lukrasta’s book. It was believed that it had been dictated to him word by word by the Fiend. So as soon as Alice began the ritual he’d appeared before her.

‘You make it sound like you had no choice, Alice. Are you sure you aren’t just twisting the truth? Grimalkin was there: she said that as soon as you saw the mage you changed and wanted to be with him.’

Grimalkin’s cool assessment of what had taken place between Alice and Lukrasta had hurt me more than I could bear.

‘I just accepted the inevitable, Tom. Belonging to him enabled me to get close to him. It gave me a chance to help you. It gave me a chance to save you.’

I remembered seeing Alice on the balcony of Lukrasta’s tower in Cymru. The image of them kissing came into my mind so clearly and strongly that for a moment I was back there in the past. Anger and jealousy surged through me. I took a deep breath, trying to stifle those emotions.

‘But did you have to kiss him, Alice? Couldn’t you just have worked with him? Did you have to sleep in his bed?’

‘It was the only way. He expected it. He’s used to people doing his will,’ Alice continued. ‘I was able to save your life more than once, Tom. Lukrasta wanted to restore the Fiend to power in order to oppose the Kobalos. He’d have done anything, he would, to achieve that. He would have squashed you like an ant. But you listen to someone who kisses you and holds you close, Tom. You listen to someone who sleeps in your bed. Don’t you see that? That’s why I did it.

‘He wanted to come with me to the Spook’s garden to steal the Fiend’s head. Nobody there would have survived that: not you, not John Gregory – not even Grimalkin. But because I was close to him I was able to change his mind, Tom. I persuaded him to let me go alone. That way nobody got hurt too much . . . apart from the boggart – it fought so hard, I was forced to hurt it more than I wanted.’

‘That note you left me in the tower – you said that you never wanted to see me again. You said that you’d gone to the dark. Was that true as well?’ I said bitterly.

‘The mark on my thigh is now a full dark moon. Ain’t no going back from that, is there? Like I said, now I belong to the dark.’

When Alice was much younger, the mark had appeared as a crescent. She had fought against going to the dark, but from time to time she’d been forced to use dark magic to save both of us. And each time she’d done it, the crescent had grown. The full moon marked her new status – she did indeed belong to the dark.

‘But it could be a lot worse,’ Alice said.

I laughed out loud – it sounded ugly and forced. ‘What on earth could be worse than being a malevolent witch?’ I demanded.

‘I belong to the best bit of the dark. I belong to Pan. I never wanted to be a bone witch or a blood witch, or a witch that has a creepy familiar like a toad or a spider, so it’s worked out fine – I’ve ended up being something different; something that no Pendle witch has ever been. I’m an earth-witch who serves Pan. My magic comes from the ground; it comes from the elements; it comes from the Earth itself. The truth is, that’s what I was always meant to be.’

I stared at her in silence. My heart felt as cold as stone, but part of me was fascinated by what she’d just said. As far as I knew, we spooks knew nothing of earth witches. My master had never mentioned them, and there had been no reference to them in his library. It was a completely new category of witch.

Anger flared within me again and drove away my curiosity. I asked her a question: ‘If Lukrasta were still alive, would you be with him now?’

‘Open your ears, Tom! If you’d listened to what I said, you’d know the answer to that. Of course I’d still be with him – I’d be doing the will of Pan. But now that he’s dead the bond between me and Lukrasta is over, ain’t it?’

‘Do you miss him, Alice?’

She stared at me for a long time before replying. ‘You can’t be close to someone and not miss ’em when they’re gone. He was kind to me. He wasn’t all bad. None of us are. If I didn’t miss him I wouldn’t be human, would I? I feel sorry for him, I do. They did terrible things to him before they killed him, Tom. They stitched his lips together so that he couldn’t chant spells. They chopped off his hands so that he couldn’t make magical signs. He was in agony. But I couldn’t help him.’