The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection

by Joseph Delaney

  At last she came to stand beside us. It seemed that we’d succeeded. The great beast was bound; despite all his efforts, he had been unable to tear himself free. We remained standing there for some time, saying nothing, hardly able to believe what we’d just accomplished.

  “The Fiend isn’t bound forever, though, is he?” I dared ask, my voice hardly more than a whisper. “One way or another, one day he’ll be free….”

  “Nothing lasts forever, lad,” said the Spook, frowning. “But now he can’t leave that shape because his flesh is pierced with silver and he’s bound to the rock. And separating him from his head makes the binding even stronger. He’ll be here until we find a way to put an end to him for good. But what I fear most is that someone or something else might release him. That’s the biggest danger now.”

  “That won’t happen,” said Grimalkin. “As you say, so long as the head and the body are separated, the Fiend will remain bound. At first I intended to bury the head in a different place—maybe far across the sea. But now I’ve thought of a better way.

  “The head belongs to me now. I will be its custodian. I plan to travel back to the County and keep it near me at all times. Denizens of the dark will hunt me down. They will come after me to retrieve the head and return it here, but I will kill them one by one. I will keep it as long as I can.” Grimalkin looked down. “Though it’s true that I cannot run and fight forever. There will be too many, and they will catch me in the end.” She looked at me directly. “While I hold them off, use the time to find a way to finish him once and for all.”

  I drew the sword and held it toward her, hilt first. “Take the sword,” I said. “It will help!”

  Grimalkin shook her head. “No, I have my own weapons, and your need will be greater. Remember, the servants of the Fiend will follow you too. They will know what has been done—and recognize your part in it. Besides, you are the keeper of the Destiny Blade now. You will know when it is time to hand it on to another. As we drove the silver spears into the body of the Fiend, we drove a sliver of fear into all denizens of the dark, no matter how powerful. They now know what it is like to be afraid. And from the moment you sliced off the Fiend’s head, your destiny was changed. Where once you were hunted, now you have become the hunter of the dark!”

  Then, without a backward glance, Grimalkin lifted the leather sack, threw it over her left shoulder, and ran off into the night.

  The Spook glanced at me sternly. “Best take her words with a pinch of salt. The truth is that after your foolish pact, you were lucky to get another chance, lad,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s right on one count, though: There will be a final reckoning with the Fiend. Until then, we’ve bought ourselves a bit of respite. We need to put it to good use.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  COVERED IN BLOOD

  WE stayed on at Shey’s house while the buds on the hawthorn hedges burst into leaf and the sun coaxed the first reluctant spring flowers into bloom. Blustery winds still occasionally drove squalls of rain in from the west, but when the sun did shine, it had real warmth.

  Good news had arrived from the County. As Grimalkin had predicted, both the Lowland and Highland Scots had joined a coalition of the free northern counties. A big battle had been fought north of Kendal. The enemy had been driven south, but the conflict was far from over yet. They had regrouped near Priestown, and another battle was imminent. Each day I waited expectantly, hoping for news. I wanted to go home.

  The guards around the house had been doubled ever since one of them had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. I had noted Grimalkin’s warning, but I had not seen any sign of the servants of the dark. The long war between the mages and the landowners had once more settled into the uneasy stalemate that had endured for centuries. Despite our best efforts, nothing had really changed.

  Early one morning, with the sun shining in a cloudless sky, I was out exercising the dogs. I’d had an uncomfortable night and hadn’t slept well. I’d been thinking about Alice. Her loss was a pain that still kept me awake.

  The dogs sensed something first. All three of them stopped barking and came to a sudden halt. They were staring toward a wood about half a mile to the west. Suddenly, with Claw in the lead, they bounded away toward it, yelping excitedly. I called them back, but they ignored me, so I had no choice but to run after them.

  I thought it was unlikely to be a rabbit or a hare. Claw, Blood, and Bone were usually obedient dogs, and no matter how strong the scent they’d picked up, once given a command, they came to heel. What was wrong with them?

  By the time I reached the trees, the dogs had already bounded far ahead, deep in the wood. I could hear their barks growing fainter and fainter. Annoyed, I slowed to a walk. Immediately I noticed that it was very quiet beneath the canopy of fresh green leaves. The breeze had died away, and there was no birdsong. Nothing was moving. And then I heard it—the sound of distant pipes. I’d heard that music before. It was Pan!

  I began to run. With every stride I took, the music grew louder. Moments later, I burst into a clearing. The god had once again taken the form of a boy dressed in green and was sitting on a log, a smile on his face. Around him stood a circle of bewitched animals: stoats, ferrets, rabbits, hares, along with my three dogs—all staring at him intently. Above, the branches were laden with birds. And there, at his feet, was a girl in a mud-splattered white dress.

  She was lying on her back with her head resting against the log. Although young, her hair was white. It was not a pretty ash blond, but the stark white of old age. She was wearing pointy shoes. With a shock, I suddenly recognized her: Alice.

  Pan stopped playing and lowered his pipe. Immediately all the animals, with the exception of my dogs, fled into the trees. Above my head, there was a beating of wings as the birds dispersed. Claw, Blood, and Bone moved toward me and began to whine softly. Now that the music had stopped, they were afraid.

  I stared at Alice, a mixture of thoughts and emotions churning within me. In part I was filled with joy. She was back, when I had never ever expected to see her again. But there was clearly something wrong, and I was alarmed.

  Before I could say anything, Pan spoke. “I did not forget you, nor what you asked; so, in gratitude for freeing me from the body of the goat, I’ve brought your friend back,” he said in lilting tones. “When you bound the Fiend, the walls of his domain were weakened, and I was able to enter. What you did was brave but foolish. His servants are after your head now. Sooner or later they will take it.”

  Contradictory emotions swirled within me: joy at having Alice returned to me, dismay at what had been done to her.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I murmured, kneeling beside her, my happiness tempered by the change I saw. I stroked her face, but she flinched away from me like a wild animal, her eyes filled with terror.

  “She has dwelled in the Fiend’s domain and seen things such as no living mortal should ever witness. No doubt she has been subjected to many torments, too. I fear for her mind.”

  “Will she ever recover?” I asked.

  “Who can say?” answered Pan with a careless smile. “I have done what I can. But dealing with the Fiend is one more thing I have to thank you for. Practitioners of dark magic the world over have been weakened by what you have accomplished. The mages will now lack the strength to bind me. I will be able to keep my magic for myself!”

  He smiled again, and slowly began to fade from sight. For a few seconds he lingered as a ghostly transparent figure; then he was gone. Within moments, the birds began to sing again and a breeze sighed through the trees.

  I turned to the figure lying before me. “Alice! Alice! It’s me, Tom. What’s happened to you?” I cried.

  But she didn’t respond and just stared at me, her eyes wide with fear and bewilderment. I tried to help her to her feet, but she snatched her hand away and scrambled up behind the log. Apart from her white hair, she looked like my friend, the Alice I remembered, but her mind seemed changed utterly. Had she a
ny recollection of me? Did she even know her own name? It didn’t seem so.

  I leaned forward, grabbed her by the wrist, and tried to pull her to her feet. She lashed out at me with the nails of her left hand, scratching my right cheek and just missing my eye. I looked at her warily. What could I do?

  “Come on, Alice!” I said, pointing through the trees. “You can’t stay here. Let’s go back to the house. It’s all right—you’re back from the dark. You’re safe now. And listen—we’ve done it! We’ve managed to bind the Fiend!”

  Alice stared at me sullenly but made no response. Short of dragging her along by force, there was only one thing I could do. I turned to the dogs.

  “Bring Alice back! Bring Alice!” I cried, pointing at her and then in the direction of Shey’s house.

  The three wolfhounds stealthily moved behind her and growled. Alice looked back at them, her face twitching with alarm. It pained me to have to do this to her, but I had little choice. She was not open to reason, and I had to get her back to the house somehow.

  For a moment she remained rooted to the spot. It wasn’t until Claw gave a warning bark and bared her teeth that she started to move. So it was that they herded Alice along like a stray sheep. It took a long time because she kept trying to break free and had to be brought back and forced in the right direction. It wasn’t easy for the dogs, and they were in some danger themselves. Every so often Alice would snarl and lunge toward them with her razor-sharp nails.

  It took over an hour to get her back to the house—a walk I could have accomplished in no more than fifteen minutes. Once there, I realized that my troubles had just begun.

  “Her reason’s fled,” said the Spook, “and there’s no guarantee that she’ll ever be herself again. And is it any wonder? Some folks have been driven completely mad after just one glimpse of a creature of the dark; the poor girl’s actually spent time in the domain of the Fiend. The outlook’s not good, I’m afraid.”

  Alice was cowering in a corner of the yard, surrounded by the three dogs. Every so often, a glimmer of cunning flashed into her eyes and she struck out. Claw already had a bloody scratch just above her right eye.

  “There’s got to be some way to make her better,” I said.

  The Spook shrugged. “Shey has sent for the local doctor, but I suspect he’ll be worse than useless, lad. What do doctors know about the dark and its power?”

  “Maybe a witch could help?” I suggested, anticipating the Spook’s reaction—which was a flicker of anger across his brow. “I mean a benign witch, a healer,” I continued quickly. “There are a few back in the County. There’s her aunt, Agnes Sowerbutts.”

  “We’d have to get back to the County first,” said the Spook.

  I nodded. It wasn’t possible yet. I just hoped that the imminent battle would go our way and we would be able to return soon.

  As the Spook had warned, the doctor wasn’t any help. He merely left some medicine to make Alice sleep. At dusk we tried to dose her, but it wasn’t easy. We needed the assistance of three of Shey’s maids to hold her down. Despite that, she spat out the first three mouthfuls. Then they held her nose, forcing her to swallow. Once she was asleep, they put her to bed and we locked the door of her room.

  I awoke suddenly, aware that something was wrong. Immediately I heard the noise of pointy shoes crossing a wooden floor, and I sat bolt upright in bed. Alice’s room was next to mine.

  Quickly I climbed out of bed and pulled on my shirt, breeches, and boots. I tapped on Alice’s door before turning the key, which had been left in the lock. The bed was empty and the sash window had been opened wide so that a cold draft was lifting the curtains and gusting directly into the room.

  I dashed over to the open window and peered out. There was no sign of Alice. The bedroom was only one floor up, so I climbed through the window, dropped onto the cinder path below, and sprinted out through the garden. I called Alice’s name softly to avoid waking the household. Her wildness had disrupted things enough already, and I didn’t want to put a further strain on Farrell Shey’s hospitality.

  Then, in the distance, I saw the silhouette of a girl—but she was not where I expected her to be. Alice hadn’t made for the gate. She had climbed the garden wall and was almost over it!

  I ran toward her, but long before I got there she was over the top and out of sight. Where was she going? I wondered. Anywhere, just to get away? I reached the wall and started to climb. My first attempt was unsuccessful. There were few handholds and the rain had made the stone slippery, so I ended up falling back and landing awkwardly. Alice had made it look so easy. The second time, I managed to scramble quickly up onto the top of the wall. I’d just come close to twisting my ankle, so I wasn’t taking any chances: I turned around carefully, holding on tight and lowering my body before dropping down into a cobbled yard. I rolled over once but came to my feet quickly and peered out into the darkness, trying to locate Alice.

  There was no moon, and I had to rely on starlight. But even though I could see in the dark better than most other people, I could see no sign of Alice. So I concentrated, closed my eyes, and listened.

  Directly ahead I heard a shriek, and then a sort of scuffling and flapping. I ran toward the sound. There were more squawks, and I realized that the sounds were coming from the large wooden coop where Shey kept his chickens.

  The nearer I got, the louder the noises erupting from the pen. The birds were fluttering about in panic.

  With a strong sense of unease, I recalled a dark memory from my childhood. One night, a fox had raided my dad’s henhouse. When we arrived, bleary-eyed, forced from our beds by a terrible cacophony of sounds, five were already dead. Blood and feathers were everywhere.

  But this time it wasn’t a fox terrorizing the chickens—it was Alice. I couldn’t see her, but even above the squawking of the birds I could hear something so grotesque that at first my mind refused to accept what it was. I crouched down close to the wooden pen, frozen to the spot. Then I heard shouts and the thud of heavy boots running toward us. Next thing I knew, someone was holding up a flaming torch to reveal the horror within.

  Alice was on her knees in the middle of the coop; she was surrounded by dead and dying birds. Some had had their heads or wings torn off. One headless chicken was still running around. Alice held a dead bird in each hand. She’d been eating them raw, and her mouth was covered in blood.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  POOR TOM

  ALICE was a predator, no better than a wild animal filled with blood lust. It shook me to the core to see her behaving like this. The Spook was right: Her mind was completely unhinged. Did any part of the Alice I’d known still remain, or was she now a total stranger?

  The guard holding the torch swore. Another lifted a club and made to enter the pen. Alice lurched to her feet, and for a moment I thought she was going to attack him. But then she jumped. It was an impossible leap that sent her soaring right over his head, and over the gate behind him, to land in the mud outside. Then, without a backward glance, she ran off into the darkness.

  I took one look at the startled faces of the guards, then turned and followed her. She was heading for the unguarded gates, and although I was sprinting, desperate to catch her, she seemed to be possessed of an unnatural strength. Alice was pulling away from me with every stride, and the sound of her pointy shoes hitting the grass was becoming fainter and fainter.

  Soon my breath was rasping in my throat and I began to tire. I slowed down and continued in the same direction. Surely she couldn’t keep up that pace for much longer, I thought. Every so often I halted, paused, and listened. But there was nothing to be heard—only the sighing of the wind in the trees and the occasional eerie cry of some nocturnal creature. But then, at last, the crescent moon came up, and I was finally able to employ some of the tracking skills the Spook had taught me. Soon I found Alice’s footprints on the edge of a copse, confirming that I was still on her trail.

  It wasn’t long before I began to feel u
neasy. Normally I’d never have ventured out without my staff, but I’d been so worried about Alice that I’d followed her instinctively, without thinking. As for the Destiny Blade, I’d left it in the sheath that Grimalkin had made. My silver chain was back in my bag, and I hadn’t even filled my pockets with salt and iron. I was completely unarmed—and cold, too, in just my shirt and breeches. I was completely unprepared, and each step I took away from the house could well be increasing my danger. Hadn’t I been warned that the denizens of the dark would be after me in revenge for the part I’d played in binding the Fiend? While I tracked Alice, something could well be hunting me.

  Alarmed by that possibility, I halted and slowly turned through a full circle, searching my immediate surroundings. I could neither see nor sense anything. There was no feeling of cold warning me that something from the dark was near. So, still nervous and very vigilant, I continued on my way. I couldn’t leave Alice alone out here, whatever the risk.

  Another hour passed, and I found more indications that I was still on the right track. As well as another set of footprints, I spotted a piece torn from Alice’s dress as she’d walked straight through a patch of brambles. At least the shape and depth of the prints told me that she was no longer running, so I hurried on, hopeful of catching her at last. I continued until I reached the edge of a wooded hill.

  The next set of prints I found made my heart plunge right down into my boots. There were some that didn’t belong to Alice. There was also evidence of a struggle, the ground churned to mud—and spotted with blood. From the marks I estimated that Alice had been seized by a group of people.