Shadow Spell

by Caro King

  Although all the life he had consumed hung around Azork in a bright halo, Jik could see in his eyes that it was true.

  ‘They know it, too.’ Azork glanced in the direction of the other tombfolk. ‘I am no longer their king.’

  Following his look, Jik saw a silver column spiralling up, higher and higher against the night and the smoke. The Queen was leaving, taking her hive back into the skies. Rainbow had won that little showdown.

  ‘Hikik nik yik,’ he said simply, turning back to Azork.

  Azork shuddered at Hilary’s name. ‘Why should I care if she needs me or not?’ he hissed.

  He turned his back on the town, but Jik somersaulted over his head, landing to stand in his way. Tombfolk and mudman exchanged a long look.

  Jik’s meant: You are going to die, so why not die well? Why not spend the last of your life helping Hilary Jones save Nin and save the Drift?

  And Azork’s meant: I care nothing for the Drift. If I can’t enjoy its beauty, why should anyone else? I was the Daemon of the Night, King of the tombfolk, and now I’m nothing, a once-sorcerer with no power and no future. And all because of one wretched Quick. So why, in Galig’s name, should I help her?

  Jik shrugged, then turned and walked away. He went slowly to give Azork time to think about it. He just hoped they wouldn’t be too late.

  Behind him, Azork hissed angrily. But he followed Jik to the town hall anyway. Only, he wasn’t going to help.

  Hilary had reminded him of his past love for Senta and that was destroying the spell that kept him alive. So if he was going to die, then he would have one last act of revenge before the end. He would kill Hilary Jones. And maybe killing the Quick who had broken his spell would reverse the damage she had done and save him. It was his one last chance to survive and he was going to take it.

  On the town hall roof, Hilary had given herself up to tears. The skinkin was still there too, watching them, waiting. Hilary guessed that it hadn’t quite done its job yet. It had been created to kill the legendary Ninevah Redstone and that legend would only die when Hilary Jones stumbled out into the world to tell it what had happened. Then the news of Nin’s death would spread like wildfire, burning up everyone’s hopes of saving the Drift, making her just another kid who would be forgotten in days. And when that happened the skinkin would finally be free.

  ‘Is it too late, then?’ asked a familiar voice.

  Startled, Hilary looked up to see Azork hovering in the air before her.

  ‘Everything’s over,’ she said. ‘All these amazing people, this beautiful Land. Just as I’ve found them all everything’s going to die.’ She half-smiled, rubbing her arm across her face to blot some of the tears. ‘That’s a little selfish, isn’t it?’

  Azork drifted down, his feet touching the roof, making him solid again. Outlined against the fire-lit sky he looked cut from night, all stars and darkness.

  ‘But then,’ sighed Hilary, ‘sorcerers are a selfish breed.’ She looked down at Nin’s body and stroked her hair sadly, then touched the spell with her fingertip. It glowed softly in reply, but stayed dark, as if in mourning too.

  Azork’s star-filled eyes glittered as he stepped forward, preparing to kill. He would tear the woman apart, he thought, and drink her blood straight from her body. He reached out.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ Hilary was saying, ‘even if it is too late.’

  She looked up at him again, stained with the blood of many injured, messy and exhausted with her hair dull and matted and her white face smeared. Her eyes were still brimming with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ she sighed, ‘even if you are Dread.’

  There was a sound like tearing silk. Azork shuddered as threads of light appeared, running over his skin like spider webs. The stars in his eyes went out.

  Hilary’s eyes met his. The night went on around them, but something had changed.

  ‘I was going to kill you, but I can’t,’ he said. ‘Because of you I remember what it is to love, and although I swore I would never feel that again, seeing you now …’ Azork smiled ruefully out of eyes that were now only silver. ‘My stupid heart just let me down. I’ve fallen in love all over again.’

  Underneath all the tears, Hilary blushed. She didn’t know what to say.

  Azork struggled for a moment, a tangle of emotions running across his face. Some of them were old, bitter ones and some of them were new. He had loved Senta and she had hurt him. But now he had fallen in love with Hilary, and he would never know if she could have loved him back. There was not enough time. But maybe there was one thing he could do. He reached a decision and stepped forward. Then he leaned towards Nin, stooping low over her.

  ‘My spell is gone,’ he said. ‘I’m dying anyway. But I’ll give my last strength to help the girl if it will make you happy. I’ll give her my life.’

  He breathed out and life poured from him in a flood, bathing Nin in light. Hilary gasped. She could see it, soaking into the girl’s skin, running into her mouth and up her nose and even squeezing under her eyelids. She felt Nin’s heart stutter into a beat. And then another.

  She was only half aware that around them the night grew colder for a moment and a tremor ran through the Land.

  Azork felt it and smiled grimly. Every act had its backlash, and the bigger the act the bigger the repercussions. He had brought someone back from the dead and the price would be enormous. And he didn’t just mean the cost to him, the loss of his last precious hours of life. It was more than that. For an act this huge there would be terrible consequences. He turned his head to search the shadows. Something was there, watching.

  Nin stirred and moaned, then settled again, her eyelids flickering. She didn’t wake up, but now it was sleep, not death.

  ‘Her body is still damaged,’ Azork said, ‘her heart has been weakened and her brain clouded with the strain of fear and despair. But she’s alive. The rest is up to you and your friends.’

  He stepped back. With all his life shed, he looked thin, insubstantial. The cracks of light on his skin had gone and now he was as he once had been. Slender, darkskinned and silver-eyed. Hilary could see right through him; as she watched, he was becoming a ghost.

  ‘You’re fading,’ she said.

  Azork smiled at her. ‘Just remember, I didn’t do this for Ninevah Redstone, or for the Land. I did it for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ breathed Hilary, her eyes fixed on his, two points of soft light in the darkness. A breath of wind stirred her hair and rustled the few leaves growing from the wall. Then it tore the last traces of Azork apart like mist and he was gone.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hilary again, to the empty sky.

  Hilary had forgotten the skinkin. Even as Jik appeared in the doorway, his flame eyes peering anxiously at Nin, a movement to their left got their attention.

  The creature leapt out of the darkness. It was bigger, the size of a large cat or a small fox, and skin over bone, with long ears, yellowed claws and legs built to run and leap. Its eyes were holes overflowing with shadows that hung around it and it carried a smell of mould and decay.

  Hilary held Nin tight against her, paralysed with fear. Jik sprang to their side.

  Skinkin watched the three living beings with cold anger. It had been cheated. Ninevah Redstone had survived even Death and now her legend was safe for as long as there were Quick to tell the story.

  ‘Wik hikik!’

  Hilary tipped her head, listening to Senta’s spell.

  ‘Strood made it to end Nin, but it’s failed,’ she said slowly, ‘and now it’s … Well, it can’t die as it should, because now it has a task it can’t complete. So this is the price we’ve paid to have Nin alive again. The skinkin has become a new Fabulous.’

  Skinkin bared its stained teeth at them, then raised its head and scented the air, breathing in the night. It sprang and its great leap took it over their heads, flying through the air to land on the bell tower. Trying again was not an option. Now, the one person in the La
nd that Skinkin could never attack was Nin. Every Fabulous had its rules.

  On the bell tower, outlined black against the moonlight, it threw back its head and let out a cry like many people screaming their last. The sound echoed through the night and everyone who heard it, Quick, Grimm or Fabulous, stopped what they were doing to listen. Then it sprang again and was gone.

  30

  Crowsmorte

  Along the rim of the world, a seam of red fire exploded into life, burning away the long night and casting a doom-filled light across fields that were dark with crowsmorte, each purple flower splashed with scarlet that matched the dawn. Their scent made the air both heavy and sweet at the same time and they covered everything so thickly that it was hard to tell where the fields ended and Hilfian began.

  Slowly people appeared from their hiding places. A couple from a hut here, more from another, and a whole gaggle from the cellars underneath the ruined mud building that had once served as a general store. Taggit was among them, and Jonas, white-faced with exhaustion. More townsfolk, Quick and Grimm, peered out through doors or collapsed walls, then grew bold and stepped into the cool air where a gentle breeze made the crowsmorte nod and blew away the smoke from the still smouldering barns.

  It was a lovely day, if only because none of them had expected to see it.

  Over the other side of the Heart, watching the dawn through the crystal walls of the Sunatorium, Mr Strood steepled his fingers and studied the row of three … beings … in front of him.

  ‘I was surrounded,’ said Chief Bogeyman Pigwit. He was huddled up under a very large, very thick blanket with his back turned firmly against the early-morning light. He didn’t look at all well after a horrible night, rounded off by the huge effort of superspeeding back to the House, finding a way around all the patches of Raw, with a bad-tempered stone in his pocket. It had grumbled all the way to the House and Pigwit wished he had left the stupid thing where he had found it, staggering across the battlefield in a daze.

  ‘I thought you said there were only two?’

  Pigwit blinked. ‘More’n that. Four at least. There was no escapin’.’

  ‘But you’re here,’ pointed out Strood reasonably.

  ‘Barely. Only cos I managed t’ make a break fer it when they was busy wiv the townsfolk. Six or seven there were, all big bogeymen wiv teef an’ everyfin’.’

  ‘You’re a bogeyman. With teeth. And everything.’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  ‘They were REAL bogeymen,’ snapped Jibbit.

  Strood sighed and shook his head at Pigwit. ‘I sent you to oversee a mere two of your fellows in sorting out the town. A small task, I would have thought. A few mud huts, easily burned. A few Quick, easily fried. A little girl, easily picked up. Instead, what do you bring me?’ His quartz eye glittered. ‘A stone. An insignificant little stone.’

  Jibbit thought about huffing indignantly, but decided against it. He was on the table opposite Strood, mainly so that Strood didn’t have to look down at him all the time, but at least he was off the ground. Jibbit shuddered at the memory of the last few hours, used as a battering weapon in battle, dropped and trampled on, stamped into the mud like … like … a stone. He had survived though. His worst nightmare had come true and he had survived and now the thought of ground wasn’t nearly as terrifying as it had been. But that didn’t mean that his yearning for high had gone. If anything it was growing.

  Sitting back in his chair, Strood eyed them thoughtfully. Pigwit’s eyes were watering in the light and where he was holding on to the blanket, he had left one of his fingers out accidentally. It had begun to smoke.

  ‘So, Giblet, you are telling me that in spite of everything I have thrown against her – my terrible army, the deadly skinkin – she is still alive?’

  Jibbit nodded. His stony paws clicked nervously against the table. There was a strangled squawk from Pigwit as his finger burst alight and he had to stamp on it to put the flames out.

  There was a long silence. Strood’s eyes, the quartz one by now glowing horribly, fixed on the third person in the group in front of him. The one standing with its arms folded as it leaned nonchalantly against the table. The figure yawned. It was a woman with dark hair and eyes the colour of winter. She was wearing a pair of interesting boots.

  ‘I told you she would,’ Doctor Mel said. ‘Even I couldn’t get to her.’

  A look of hatred twisted across Strood’s face. ‘It was a stupid idea,’ he said scathingly. ‘The luck belongs to her, not to her physical form. Trust a once-sorcerer to overlook something like that. You think that all the Quick are is a body, a lump of flesh to be … He stopped.

  Jibbit glanced curiously from one to the other. There was something between these two, something big.

  Pigwit was almost doubled up under his blanket, only his red eyes glowed in its shadow.

  ‘Go,’ said Strood, switching his gaze to the bogeyman. A smile curled his thin lips. ‘And don’t bother me again. Ever.’ He leaned forward, his voice a soft hiss on the air. ‘You’re. Sacked.’

  Pigwit squeaked and trembled and it seemed to Jibbit that he shrank, growing smaller and thinner until instead of bony he looked spindly. A spindly thing with red eyes and bandy legs.

  ‘It’s all a state of mind,’ said Strood calmly as the once-bogeyman ran for the door. ‘He’s no longer Dread, he doesn’t have it in him any more. These Fabulous, they think they’re so invincible.’ He chuckled. ‘But then, you should know all about that.’

  Mel glared.

  ‘Well, Ava …’ went on Strood.

  The once-sorcerer in the woman’s body winced at the familiar tone and bit back a sharp comment.

  ‘… things haven’t gone quite as I would have liked, I’ll admit, but it can still be saved. It seems to me that this is one job I shall just have to do myself.’

  ‘You’ve got a plan?’

  ‘Of course,’ chuckled Strood. ‘When do I not have a plan?’

  ‘And it is …?’ Vispilio sounded bored, though he wasn’t. For possibly the first time in his horrible life he was very far from bored. It was a long time since he had seen Strood and the man had changed. He was no longer Gan Mafig’s servant. He was pure insanity wrapped in a skin.

  Outside the red fires of dawn were burning out on a clear day.

  ‘Simple,’ answered Strood, ‘like all the best plans. Kill. Everything.’

  ‘Are you sure this is the only way?’ asked Jonas.

  They were back in Hen’s hut and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking worried. Jik and Hilary were there too, watching anxiously as Hen tipped potion down the sleeping Nin’s throat.

  ‘It’s the only way I know,’ said Hen. ‘Dissolved, crowsmorte is a potent healer, if used right. And she needs a lot of healing. Azork may have brought her back to life, but he couldn’t repair the damage. Her heart is very weak.’

  ‘The sisters gave her crowsmorte potion too. I’ve never heard of anyone taking it twice before.’

  Hen smiled. ‘Nothing venture, nothing have,’ she said, patting Nin’s hand. ‘Just let her sleep and we’ll see. Only thing is, I had to make it strong, so she might have a few funny dreams.’

  31

  Celidon

  Nin was dreaming about music, a kind of soft singing. There was something familiar about it. She didn’t know where it was coming from, because the rest of the dream was taking place in a city on a rainy day. She was standing in the middle of a broad street surrounded by buildings that soared above her, sweeping to a white sky, their spires and domes wreathed in mist. Everything was light grey or white stone, but even in such pale hues, lost against the blank clouds, the walls and towers looked magnificent. Fine drizzle veiled her hair with tiny drops and a chill breeze made her shiver.

  Nin knew this had to be a dream, it had that unreal quality. Though it was getting more vivid every moment. Before this, the last thing she remembered clearly was going to find Seth. She had a feeling there was more, but that it was
best if she didn’t think about it for the moment.

  The singing faded away, leaving only the soft patter of rain. Now it was gone, she remembered where she had heard it before. In the Sanctuary, when Elinor had given her crowsmorte potion.

  I’m hurt, she thought, and Hen is trying to heal me. But for now I’m dreaming, so I might as well enjoy it while I can.

  A figure draped in a dark cloak and with a blood-red scarf twined about his neck paused at her side. Beneath the cloak he was wearing a black silk suit and a bright, embroidered waistcoat.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, ‘come along then. Morgan wants to see you.’

  In that moment Nin saw that she was not alone in the city. There were others, hurrying along the pavements, heads bowed against the weather. Not many, but enough to make her wonder why she had not seen them before. But it was the one at her side that commanded her attention most and she turned to look up at him.

  He was tall and slender and the lines and planes of his face were as beautiful as the buildings around them. Nin recognised him at once from the Mansion, but there was more than that. A sense of familiarity about his teasing smile.

  ‘Simeon Dark!’

  ‘Of course.’ He laughed and she saw that his eyes were gold. Not plain gold, but dappled with flecks of silver. ‘Come along, follow me and no dawdling.’

  He set off and Nin started after him, hurrying to keep up. She didn’t know what was going on, but then who did in dreams?

  Dark turned down a street of stone walls, their grey broken by the shining squares of windows, lit against the dismal day. A woman passed them, going the other way, and Nin saw that her face was sad and her silver eyes held a fear that made them dark. Looking back as the woman walked on, Nin lagged behind her guide, then had to run to catch up. For the first time she noticed that the pavement was covered in a fine layer of dust. Mixed with the rain it made a paste that coated her boots and splashed her jeans. Its pale colour was striking against the dark material of the sorcerer’s cloak.