The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection

by Joseph Delaney

  I waited impatiently for the lamia to bring Thorne to me. What was taking so long? I had a moment of fear. What if in the meantime she’d been attacked by the chykes again? How long could she hope to hold such a fierce flock at bay?

  Then I heard the beating of wings and sighed with relief as Wynde lowered Thorne to stand beside me. Hovering before us, the winged lamia pointed at the door with a taloned hand.

  “That is the way,” she confirmed. “There may be others inside who are willing to help, but whether they can fight their way to you is uncertain.”

  “We thank you for your help,” I told her.

  “Thank me by getting what you seek. Thank me by putting an end to the Fiend!” she cried. Then she soared aloft, flew round the tower, and was lost to sight.

  Wasting no time, we hurried toward the door. There was no visible handle. What if it was locked? I asked myself. The spell of opening wouldn’t work in this place.

  But I needn’t have feared. It opened at the pressure of my hand and swung inward, its hinges groaning. It was very dark inside, and I reached for the candle in my pocket. But as I brought it out, I remembered that without magic I wouldn’t be able to light it. Thorne shrugged, then squeezed past me and went through the door slowly, her hands extended before her. She was touching the wall, feeling her way in the dark.

  “It seems to be a spiral staircase,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “It goes counterclockwise. Feel for the rail on the right.”

  Pushing the candle back into my pocket, I went through the open doorway cautiously. Sliding my hand down the rail, I steadied myself as I descended the stone steps, following the spiral downward. Hemmed in by cold stone walls on both sides, I felt claustrophobic. There was no way to stop our pointy shoes from clacking on the stone steps, and I hoped that nothing was waiting for us below. It would have plenty of warning of our arrival.

  We must have gone down at least a couple of hundred steps when I noticed a yellow flickering light from below, which allowed me to see Thorne’s silhouette. The constant turning left was starting to make me feel dizzy, and it seemed to be getting warmer, which wasn’t helping.

  We emerged onto a narrow ledge, and glancing beyond it, my dizziness grew worse and I almost fell forward. The space I gazed upon was vast and the ground lay far below. It resembled some gigantic cavern, and my first thought was that the inside of the basilica was somehow larger than the outside. Then I remembered the house where Betsy Gammon had been the keeper of the water witches, and realized that the effect was due to something similar. The lowest level of the basilica had been excavated in the same way. Its floor was far lower than the ground outside the building.

  Nothing seemed to be moving below, but I could see a number of structures. Were they altars to the various Old Gods of the dark?

  “Where’s the gate, then?” I said, immediately realizing I had made a mistake. I had kept my voice low, but it was amplified by the vast inner area of the basilica and echoed from wall to wall.

  Had I further alerted our enemies to our presence?

  In response to my question, Thorne put a warning finger against her lips and pointed downward.

  But how could we get there? The narrow ledge didn’t slope down. It ran along the wall at the same height. However, Thorne set off along the ledge, taking slow, careful steps. I kept my eyes on her right shoulder, the one nearest the wall, not daring to glance into the scary abyss. Beyond her I saw an archway in the wall. When Thorne ducked her head and stepped inside it, I followed. Narrow steps led into the dark, slowly becoming wider, the dank walls pressing in on either side.

  Once again the thought came to me that someone or something would be waiting for us below. Could it be that our every move was known? Again I had the sense of being watched. This time it was stronger than ever.

  I could see flickering lights ahead. Below us lay a chamber, with candles in wall brackets.

  Thorne whispered, “We’re getting closer to the gate. But if it is there, then so are our enemies. They control it.”

  She was still going down, but her steps were slowing. Then she suddenly stopped completely. “Go back!” she shouted, spinning round to face me and gesticulating wildly. “It’s a trap! I can see enemies waiting below!”

  But it was already too late. Heavy boots thudded down the steps behind us. I couldn’t see who they were, but I knew that there were too many boots and too many enemies. We were trapped.

  Thorne drew her blades and then ran the steps toward the chamber. I followed hard on her heels. Once on level ground, I stood at her right shoulder and stared at the occupants of the small, windowless room we found ourselves in.

  There were three of them.

  Two were dressed in the garb of Pendle witches, with tattered black gowns and pointy shoes. The third was a huge abhuman with too many teeth to fit into his mouth.

  I faced three old enemies: Bony Lizzie, Mother Malkin, and Tusk.

  CHAPTER XXI

  A NEW THREAT

  I should have realized that at least one of the enemies I had bested on earth would be waiting in the basilica to get their revenge.

  Tusk, the abhuman, had been slain by Old Gregory, the Chipenden spook. Soon after that, Tom Ward had used salt and iron to weaken Mother Malkin, and in her desperation to escape she had fled across the pigpen at the Ward family farm. Those hungry pigs had eaten every bit of her, including her heart, sending her into the dark forever.

  She was small—Tom Ward’s use of salt and iron had shrunk her to a third of her previous size. And now, after death, she was trapped in that form, but she was still terribly dangerous.

  Bony Lizzie had been bound in a pit by John Gregory until war had come to the County and the Pendle witches had rescued her. My final confrontation with her had been on the Isle of Mona. Tom and I had pursued her, and she had fallen off a cliff into the sea. Destroyed by saltwater, her heart eventually eaten by fish, she too was trapped in the dark and would be desperate for revenge.

  “Well, daughter,” Lizzie said, a gloating smile on her face. “At last I have the chance to pay you back. Now we will make you suffer!”

  Old Mother Malkin shuffled forward, too. I saw that her long white hair was matted with dirt. Magic didn’t work here, but once this gnarled old witch had been the most powerful in the County, and her wrinkled body would still show a terrible, inhuman strength. Although she barely came up to my knees, her talons were extended toward me, her glowing red eyes desperate for my blood.

  I took a step backward; Thorne took a step forward.

  “Well, look what the cat’s dragged in!” Lizzie exclaimed. “Morwena ain’t going to like the way you’ve gone back on your word. She won’t be best pleased—she’ll be cutting more than your thumbs away!”

  Thorne didn’t waste words on replying. She never even looked at Lizzie. A blade was in her hand, and she slashed horizontally at Mother Malkin, opening a wide red mouth in her wrinkled forehead.

  The old witch screamed and staggered back, blood cascading down into her eyes and blinding her. I attacked, too, and struck at Lizzie with my left hand, my nails narrowly missing her eyes.

  But before I could do anything more, I was seized by Tusk. He grabbed me from behind, pinned my arms to my sides, and lifted me up so that my feet were clear of the ground. I kicked back at his knees with the heels of my pointy shoes, but he began to squeeze me so that I could hardly breathe.

  Tighter and tighter he clasped me, until I felt as if my ribs would snap. I could no longer draw air into my lungs. He was killing me. My only hope was that Thorne would somehow intervene and cut him down.

  “Let her go! Let her go!” cried Thorne.

  “Then drop your blades!” Lizzie screeched back at her.

  By then my vision had grown dark, but I heard the sound of her blades clanking on the ground. There were other noises, too—more heavy boots running down the steps and coming into the room behind us.

  We were finished. Now I would
never be able to get the dagger. The chance to destroy the Fiend would be lost.

  The next thing I knew, I was lying facedown on a cold stone floor. A woman’s voice spoke somewhere behind me.

  “She’s awake. Now I’ll teach her all about suffering!”

  There was a sudden sharp pain in my ribs. I knew it was a jab from a pointy shoe, and I recognized the voice. I had been kicked by Bony Lizzie—my own mother.

  I rolled into a ball, attempting to protect myself, but was dragged to my feet by a fist bunched in my hair. Lizzie’s eyes were glaring into mine. She looked insane with rage.

  “Now you’ll get your comeuppance, girl!” she shrieked, showering me with spittle. Almost ripping my hair out by the roots, she twisted me away from her so that I fell back into Tusk’s arms once more. He roared at me, opening his mouth wide. The foul breath was a hot wind in my face, making me retch. The yellow tusks were almost touching my cheeks, and there were a lot more sharp teeth inside his mouth—two double rows of them.

  For a moment I thought he was going to bite off my nose or tear a chunk of flesh from my face, but instead he gave me an evil grin, set me down on my feet, and turned me round to face a dark doorway opposite the steps. When I turned back to face the witches, I saw that Lizzie had a blade in each hand, pointing toward me.

  These were the blades that Thorne had been holding. The assassin was being held by a couple of the brutish men who had followed us down the stairs. Others were standing behind her—perhaps a dozen in all. I thought I recognized a couple of them as yeomen who had served Lizzie on the Isle of Mona, where she had attempted to become queen.

  For a second I gazed into Thorne’s eyes. Even though she didn’t speak, somehow I understood that not all was lost. She had dropped her blades and surrendered in order to save me. Otherwise I would have died, my ribs caved in and the life squeezed from my body by Tusk. They had disarmed her; I could see no other blades in the scabbards set in the leather straps crisscrossing her chest.

  However, I knew that Thorne’s armory was a duplication of Grimalkin’s. There was a smaller sheath just under her left arm containing another weapon—the scissors that were used to snip off the thumb bones of a slain witch.

  But for my desperate plight at the hands of Tusk, Thorne would still have been fighting. And I knew that at the first favorable opportunity, she would fight again.

  Thorne had said that the gate could be somewhere in this room. I glanced about me quickly but could see nothing. What would it look like, anyway? Gates took on different shapes and could be manipulated by those who controlled them.

  “That way!” Lizzie snapped, pushing me toward the doorway.

  I stepped forward to enter another room. This one was long and narrow—no more than three people could walk abreast. On the floor lay a bloodred carpet. I walked directly ahead of Lizzie, Tusk, and Mother Malkin, trying not to show my fear.

  I was prodded along, blade points pricking my back, toward the shadowed recess at the far end. As we approached it, my first thought was that it contained a throne, but then I saw a hooded figure slouched on a simple wooden chair with a high back. Dressed in a gown and hood, he could easily have been mistaken for a spook. Set on each side of him was a big bucket. And I didn’t have to look to know what the buckets contained. The stink told me.

  It was an unmistakable metallic, coppery smell.

  The two buckets were filled with blood.

  I glanced about me, aware that all eyes were locked upon the rich blood in the bucket—the currency in the dark. But my attention was quickly drawn back to the hooded figure.

  Slowly the head lifted, and I saw golden eyes gleaming at me from within the darkness of the hood. They were vast, at least five or six times bigger than those usually found in a human face.

  What exactly was the creature facing me? Another abhuman like Tusk? I wondered.

  Very slowly the entity raised its left hand toward its face. The fingers were long and bony and seemed to be covered in short black bristles. They drew back the hood to reveal what had been hidden within its shadows.

  But the face! The horror of that terrible face! The eyes were multifaceted, bulbous, and huge. And each one contained the image of a terrified girl. It took me a couple of moments to realize that I was gazing at my own reflection over and over again.

  The head was that of a giant fly, covered in dark hair, with a long, flickering tongue. It was a being straight out of my worst nightmares.

  I remembered again that day when we had set out to kill the old spook Jacob Stone. Lizzie had bitten the heads off thirteen rats and attracted a swarm of large black flies in order to gather sufficient magic to be able to move two large stones and free the dead witches. Lizzie had told me that the source of her power had been the dark lieutenant who sat at the left-hand side of the Fiend. And now, after death, she had clearly become his disciple and servant in the dark.

  I was facing the demon Beelzebub, sometimes called the Lord of the Flies.

  “Well, girl,” Lizzie snapped from behind me. “You always feared flies. But nothing you ever saw on earth will match this. You’re going to get exactly what you deserve! Now I remember how you cheated me of the power inside that leather egg. Well, it’s time to pay you back for everything!”

  The tongue of the demon rasped in and out of the mouth, making a strange grating, vibrating sound. Was Beelzebub attempting to speak to me?

  A moment later I realized that it was indeed some kind of communication—but it was not directed at me.

  It was a command.

  The Lord of the Flies had summoned his own special creatures to his presence.

  It began as a faint buzzing, which steadily increased in volume. Suddenly a fly was circling my head—a bluebottle as big as a bumblebee. It was quickly joined by a couple more, and then another. And it was only when the number increased to a dozen or more that I saw where the flies were coming from.

  They were erupting from Beelzebub’s open mouth, a steady line of them flying out faster and faster to swarm about my head. I cried out in fear, remembering how, back in Jacob Stone’s garden, they had settled on Lizzie’s face, obscuring every inch of it, even landing on her tongue. I was filled with a claustrophobic terror at the thought of that happening to me. But the flies quickly left me and descended in two clouds onto the buckets of blood on either side of the demon.

  They were still hurtling out of that hideous mouth, darting past the long, rasping tongue to form a living, writhing mound of flies, a dark, pulsating lid on each bucket of blood.

  Moments later the two swarms left the buckets and joined into one huge cloud less than two feet from my face. Their drone became a roar, and I tried to step back, immediately feeling the sharp points of two blades against my back as I did so.

  The dark cloud began to contract into a rough oval. Then, out of that simple egg shape, a more complex structure began to form. At first I thought it was just my imagination. I often see images like that in clouds, or even in the leaves of shrubs and trees. If you look hard enough, faces are everywhere.

  But I knew that my imagination was playing no part here. The swarm had taken on the shape of a huge face with a hooked nose, bulbous eyes, and a wide-open mouth that showed two sets of sharp teeth. And there was a further touch of horror.

  The flies had been feeding on the blood from the buckets. Some of them must have been immersed in it, under the weight of those pressing down from above. Now those flies had formed the lips and teeth of the huge face, and they were covered in blood.

  Suddenly I detected a faint smell of rotting eggs. The gate must be somewhere nearby, I realized. I looked about me, searching for a glint of maroon, but could see nothing.

  The mouth moved and the buzzing changed, became deeper.

  It was speaking to me.

  “You are the daughter of my master!” cried the humming, rasping voice. “Why have you betrayed him? You could have had so much. Why have you turned against him? Power was yours, s
imply for the asking!”

  I shook my head. “Ain’t nothing I wanted from him,” I said. “Better not to have been born than have him for a father and that dirty witch behind me for a mam.”

  That earned me a kick from Lizzie, but I bit my lip to stop myself crying out from the pain. Didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, did I?

  “Why are you here?” asked that huge mouth. “Why have you entered the dark?”

  It seemed to me that, maimed as he was, the Fiend might somehow have discovered my intent and passed it on to his servants. But perhaps Tom’s mam had been able to cloak her plan from him and from his servants in the dark. They didn’t know that we hoped to destroy him by means of the ritual. Tom’s mam had hobbled him once, and he’d snatched the blade and taken it into the dark. But if they didn’t already know that I was here to get that dagger—the third hero sword, the Dolorous Blade—it might not take them long to work it out. I certainly wasn’t going to give anything away.

  Didn’t want ’em waiting for me in the Fiend’s throne room, did I, when I went to get it?

  There was still hope. Thorne had her scissors—but would she get the chance to use them? Or would they kill us both right here and now?

  I was waiting for my chance, too. I couldn’t use magic here, but I had no intention of giving up without a fight.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE BONES OF BEELZEBUB

  “DON’T keep him waiting for an answer!” Lizzie screeched into my ear. “You wouldn’t believe what he’s capable of!”

  “I will give you one more opportunity to answer,” said the mouth, opening and closing, dripping blood as the flies droned each word. “I know your secret fear. Remain silent and it will happen to you now!”

  My secret fear! What did Beelzebub mean? I had many fears: that I might not manage to retrieve the dagger; that I would return too late for the ritual to be performed; that something might have happened to Tom; that Grimalkin would fail to keep the head safe and that the Fiend would walk the earth again; that I would lack the courage to keep silent when Tom took my bones; that one day I would be struck by lightning; that—