“They ain’t mine, that’s for sure,” said Alice. “Got big feet, Lizzie has. Much bigger than mine.”
“So she’s heading southwest,” said the Spook. “That’s the way we should go—”
“I’d like to know something,” Alice interrupted.
“What is it, girl?” demanded the Spook impatiently. “We’ve not got all day, so speak up!”
“You ain’t going to bind Lizzie—you’re going to kill her, aren’t you?” she asked. It wasn’t really a question. I could tell from her face that she knew the truth of it, and she didn’t look happy.
The Spook nodded in confirmation, his expression grave. “I’ve no choice, girl. She’s murdered too many innocents. I can’t leave a witch like her at large, especially one with such ambition. If she’d had her way, this whole island would have been plunged into her rule of darkness. Who knows what else she might attempt in the future? Best thing would be for you to stay here until we return. She is still your mother, after all. No need for you to be there. You’ve done enough, girl. Get yourself back to the mill with Adriana until it’s over.”
But I knew Alice would refuse. I’m sure she didn’t want to be a witness to her own mother’s death, but if she waited here, she’d be beyond the protection of the blood jar. She had to accompany me.
She shook her head. “I need to be there,” she said quietly.
“I’m going after Lizzie too,” Adriana told the Spook. “You might need my help. Are you with us, Simon?”
Simon Sulby nodded. “Yes,” he said, looking determined. “We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, so we’ll do this together, too.”
We went as fast as we could, but after half an hour we’d seen no sign of the witch. My master was getting worried.
“We’ve got to catch Bony Lizzie, lad,” said the Spook, “and put an end to her once and for all.”
“Perhaps we should go back to the mill for the dogs,” I suggested. “They’d soon hunt her down.”
“No time. She’s already got too much of a head start.” My master knelt down and searched the ground nearby before shaking his head. “Wait here. I’ll see if I can find her tracks again.”
He wandered off into the trees. As before, he kept pausing and looking down to scrutinize the ground, but there was more cloud now and the moonlight was intermittent.
“Can he find her again?” Adriana asked me.
“He’s an excellent tracker, but it’s really hard,” I said. “The Pendle witches can cloak themselves using dark magic to conceal their trail. A seventh son of a seventh son can still follow them, but it’s not easy. If he doesn’t pick up her tracks soon, she’ll get clean away.”
The Spook was out of sight, but within five minutes he reappeared on the edge of a copse of trees and beckoned us over. When we reached him, he gave one of his rare smiles and pointed down at a patch of mud close to a tree trunk. There were two clear prints. Pointy shoes again.
“At least we’ve got confirmation of her direction. She’s still heading southwest,” he said. “No doubt she hopes to make her escape by sea—compel some poor fisherman to carry her west toward Ireland.”
We set off even faster. Twice more the Spook found Lizzie’s tracks, but then he lost the trail.
Adriana thought she’d probably be making for either Port Erin or Port St. Mary, where there were vessels capable of making the trip westward even in a rough sea.
We were pressing on through the dark as fast as we could when a sudden vivid flash of lightning in the distance turned night into day. This was followed by a low rumble of thunder, and then the wind began to freshen. A storm was heading our way. And what a storm! Within minutes, torrential rain had driven us to take shelter in a grove of trees, while a fury of thunder and lightning erupted from the clouds above.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Lizzie had sent this storm to hold us at bay!” said the Spook as we waited for it to subside.
Cut off from the cache of animus, she was unlikely to have had the power to unleash such a storm, but she was still strong—as we soon discovered to our cost.
The storm now abated just as quickly as it had arisen. The clouds were scurrying away to the east, and we were suddenly bathed in moonlight.
We were just about to leave the shelter of the trees when, in the silence after the storm, we heard a cacophony of squeals and shrieks approaching from the west.
“Rats!” Simon shouted.
Moments later, he was proved correct. A horde of huge, fierce rats with long whiskers and sinuous tails surged into view. I knew a witch could summon rats and drink their blood, but I’d never heard of them being used to attack her enemies. We were soon fighting for our lives. We laid about us with our staffs, beating at the ground to squash the rodents and desperately plucking them off as they raced up our legs, biting and scratching as they made for our throats and faces.
I heard Alice scream and turned to find her covered in rats. She was trying to protect her head, but she was losing the battle. I tore a big rat off her head, hurled it to the ground, and stamped it underfoot.
Wave upon wave of gray rodents continued to attack us. Then, suddenly, they were fleeing, leaving behind a mass of dead and dying bodies.
Luckily we were more exhausted than hurt. “That was Lizzie’s doing,” I said.
“Aye, lad, there’s little doubt about that,” replied the Spook. “But why they broke off and fled we can only surmise. Maybe Lizzie doesn’t want to use up too much of her power. Could be she’s saving the worst for later.”
At dawn, we halted and rested for a couple of hours. Simon offered to keep watch while the rest of us grabbed some sleep. The Spook was the only one who managed to doze. His nap didn’t last long, either; he awoke groaning and sweating. Lizzie had been speaking inside his head again.
Adriana suddenly started to shiver; Simon turned to her, concerned, and put his arm around her. “What’s the matter, love?” he asked her.
“I’ve got that feeling again,” she said. “A premonition that I’ve not got long for this world.”
“But you felt like that before they rolled you down the hill—and you survived the barrel, didn’t you?” I pointed out.
“I did, but this time it’s stronger than ever. I’m certain that I’m going to die soon.”
Needing to keep up our strength, we bought bread and cheese from a cottage. It was then that Adriana offered to try her powers again. The Spook didn’t like it, but he had no better suggestion to offer.
She cupped her hands and gave a high whistling cry. Within minutes, in answer to her summons, a pair of sparrowhawks dropped out of the sky to land on her shoulders. She stroked them gently with the tip of each forefinger and whispered to them, her voice so low that, even though I was standing close, I couldn’t catch what she said.
They flew off but returned within the hour. This time they circled overhead before flying off in a different direction. When they repeated the maneuver exactly, Adriana pointed in the direction they’d taken.
“They’ve found her,” she said. “That’s the way. She’s making for Port Erin.”
Adriana was a bird witch, all right—her magic had succeeded in tracking down Bony Lizzie.
Not long after, the Spook discovered another pointy footprint in the mud. We were hot on the witch’s trail again. And then Alice confirmed it: She could now sniff her mother’s presence. Finally, at twilight, we saw Lizzie in the distance, and despite our exhaustion, increased our pace.
She was somewhere ahead of us in the gathering dusk. We glimpsed her once more, little more than half a mile away, but it was almost dark, and a sudden shower exploded from the heavens, soaking us to the skin in the five minutes it took to blow itself out.
Adriana and Simon were sprinting alongside Alice and me, the Spook just behind us, and we were closing in on the bone witch with every stride. Soon I heard the angry roar of the sea in the distance, and the rhythmic pounding of waves against the
rocky shore. At last the moon came out from behind a cloud, bathing the scene in silver light, and I saw Lizzie less than a hundred yards ahead of us. Then Simon noticed something on the ground: a pair of pointy shoes lying in the grass. Lizzie had kicked them off in a desperate attempt to gain more speed.
“She’s running straight for the headland. We’ve cut her off from the port. She’s nowhere to go now but the salty sea!” shouted the Spook.
He was right. Lizzie was running directly toward the cliffs. Very soon we would face the last of her power. How strong was she still? Would the five of us be able to overcome her? It was far from certain, but we had to try.
It was then that disaster struck. Alice slipped on the wet grass and went down hard. I stopped and helped her up, but when she tried to put weight on her left foot, it buckled under her and she fell to her knees. As the Spook raced past us, he turned to shout at me, “Leave the girl, lad! We’ll come back for her later. I need you with me! Now!” He ran on, his footsteps fading into the distance.
“Yes, leave me, Tom! My ankle’s sprained. He’s right—he’ll need all the help he can get to beat Lizzie. She’s still strong.”
“No, Alice, we stick together,” I told her, putting my arm under her left shoulder and lifting her back onto her feet. “You know why we can’t risk being separated.”
Alice could only limp slowly, grunting with pain.
The witch had nowhere left to run. She turned her back on the sea to face the Spook, Adriana, and Simon. They’d slowed to a walking pace but continued to advance along a narrow spur of grass that jutted out above the sea. The waves crashed onto the rocks below before drawing back to surge forward once more.
At first nothing happened. Then, very suddenly, like a blow to my solar plexus, I felt Lizzie’s power again. It took my breath away, almost stopped my heart. But it wasn’t dread or any other spell designed to immobilize us while she took our lives with her blade. It was a spell of compulsion. I was consumed by a strong urge to run forward and throw myself off the cliff. I wanted to fall onto the rocks and break into little pieces, to become nothing—as if I’d never been born.
I fought back, but she was too strong. I saw the waves far below. I had never wanted anything so much.
Far ahead, the Spook had fallen into a crouching position, his staff still in his left hand. With his right, he was clutching a tussock of grass, as if that would somehow anchor him to the cliff top. But then, to my dismay, Simon suddenly sprinted directly toward the cliff edge. I realized that he was going to throw himself over!
I heard Adriana scream, a long wail of anguish and loss. Simon had jumped out into nothingness, and was gone. Under the compulsion of Lizzie’s dark magic, he’d hurled himself over the edge to his death.
Ahead, Adriana was stretching her arms above her head and pointing toward the sky, arching her back just as Lizzie had earlier. Then she began to chant, hurling her words up into the firmament. She was speaking in the Old Tongue, gabbling far too quickly for me to understand.
In answer came a peal of thunder and a flash of sheet lightning, and suddenly, far above us, the heavens were filled with birds. There were crows, ravens, blackbirds, finches, and swallows—and a single magpie . . . one for sorrow.
Alice and I had almost reached the cliff, and I heard Adriana utter four more words very slowly and clearly. Even with my poor command of the Old Tongue, these were easy to translate. It was a command: “Peck out her eyes!”
From the smallest to the largest the birds obeyed, swooping down in unison to attack the witch. For a moment Lizzie was hidden from our sight, buffeted to and fro by the frenzied, screeching birds.
But she was not to be defeated so easily. There was an intense flash of light and a blast of hot air that made me close my eyes. When I opened them again, the birds were screaming, falling out of the sky, wings aflame. Some dropped, blackened, burned and twitching, onto the cliff top; others fell down into the sea, trailing smoke. Lizzie had blasted them out of the sky.
Adriana let out a great sob and rushed toward her, but the bone witch seized her by the throat and lifted her off her feet.
I knew what was going to happen. I let go of Alice and stumbled forward to try and help her, but the world was still spinning about me and I was forced to my knees, hard pressed just to stay on the cliff top, still consumed by the desire to throw myself onto the rocks.
As I watched, horrified, Lizzie hurled Adriana over the cliff. As she fell toward the rocks, she gave a shrill cry like a bird. Then she was gone.
CHAPTER XXX
A Full Reckoning
A gloating smile settled over Lizzie’s face.
“Do you know why the boy stayed behind with the girl instead of coming to help you?” she asked the Spook. “Do you know why he disobeyed you? He needs her more than anything else in the world, and she’s just as soft on him. Your apprentice sold his soul to the Fiend, and now the only thing that’s keeping him and the girl safe is a blood jar. That’s why they have to stay together. He’s using dark magic to save the both of them. That’s just one step short of belonging to the dark!”
The Spook staggered to his feet and looked at me, and as our eyes met, I saw on his face a mixture of sadness and disappointment. I’d let him down. I wasn’t the apprentice he thought I was.
Lizzie laughed long and loud, and the ugly sound was filled with triumph, with the knowledge that the dark had won.
But the battle wasn’t over yet. Adriana was dead, but her final cry hadn’t merely been one of pain and shock; it had been a command. Fresh raucous caws sounded overhead, and I saw a large flock of circling seagulls—the fierce, aggressive birds that Alice had once called “rats with wings.”
Suddenly they swooped toward the witch, their harsh, piercing screams filling the air. Bony Lizzie waved her arms to scare them off, whirling them about like a windmill in a gale. Perhaps she’d exhausted her power, or maybe there were just too many of them and she never had time to gather herself to withstand the attack. The gulls dived straight for her, eager talons outstretched. Soon all I could see was birds, a chaotic turmoil of beating wings and stabbing beaks.
For a moment I glimpsed Lizzie’s head again. Her hands covered her face, and blood ran down between her fingers. She staggered toward the cliff edge, leaning back at an impossible angle. Her eyes were black sockets in the moonlight, her mouth wide open in a scream, the sound lost among the shrieking of the birds. The seagulls obscured her again; when they soared upward, she was gone.
I ran to the cliff and peered down. For a moment her broken body was visible below. Then a big wave engulfed her, its ebb dragging her into the sea’s salty embrace. The bone witch was no more.
“Well, that’s the end of her, lad,” the Spook said, walking up to stand beside me. “If she’s not dead already, that salty sea will kill her quickly. Then she’ll be food for the fishes. They’ll eat the heart and everything. She won’t be coming back.”
“Poor Adriana and Simon are gone as well,” I said sadly. I could see no trace of their bodies on the rocks below. The sea had taken them, too.
My master nodded. “Aye, that was a bad business, lad—but that girl helped to save our lives. She was a witch all right, no doubt about it!”
“But what kind of witch was she?” I asked. “She didn’t use blood or bone magic and didn’t have a familiar.”
“She was something new to me, lad. I’ve certainly never met her like before. Maybe she simply had a special ability, one that can’t be learned and passed on to others.”
“Adriana was a benign witch,” I insisted.
My master didn’t reply. I knew he didn’t agree. Adriana had used some kind of magic to kill. To his way of thinking, the fact that she’d killed Lizzie, a malevolent witch, was irrelevant. She had still employed the dark.
I heard a noise behind us, and turned to see Alice limping along. The Spook looked at us in turn. “What Lizzie said about you selling your soul and employing a blood jar . . . pleas
e set my mind at ease and tell me she was lying,” he said quietly.
“I can’t,” I said, bowing my head. “It’s true. I owe the Fiend my soul. Alice made a blood jar, and that’s the only thing keeping him away. That’s why I couldn’t leave her behind. If I do, the Fiend will claim her in revenge for saving me.”
“Why did you give him your soul?” he asked, frowning at me. “What sort of a fool would sell his soul to the Fiend?”
“I did it at Meteora, in Greece. It’s a long story, but without that we’d all be dead now, and the whole world—not just the County—would be at risk.”
The Spook sighed; it was a sound filled with sadness and a hint of despair. “We’ll find somewhere to rest,” he said quietly. “I’m weary. We’ll talk in the morning.”
His head bowed, he turned and began to walk away, heading back toward the mill, where we needed to collect our bags. Once he had his back to us, Alice put her hand in the pocket of her skirt and drew out some objects, flinging them over the cliff and into the sea. They gleamed silver in the moonlight as they fell, the same color as the tears that glistened in her eyes.
They were the thumb bones of the shaman.
Luckily we quickly stumbled upon the ruin of a cottage. There were just three walls standing, and no roof, but it provided some shelter, and fortunately it didn’t rain again, so we settled down there for the rest of the night.
We awoke at dawn, cold and stiff, and the Spook set about building a fire while I went off to catch rabbits for our breakfast. I only managed to get one, which I skinned and gutted before Alice cooked it. There wasn’t really enough to go round, but it took the edge off my hunger.
As we ate, it began to drizzle, and dark clouds gathered from the west. There was worse weather to come.
At last there came the full reckoning.
“Right, it’s time to talk!” commanded the Spook. “Don’t leave anything out. I want to know everything. I don’t care how bad it is, I want to know it all. Let’s start with you, girl. Tell me about the blood jar. Did you fashion it?”
The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Page 153