A hand reached up toward me from the leaves. Without breaking my stride, I slipped a dagger from the scabbard on my left thigh and pinned the dead witch to the thick, gnarled root of a tree. I thrust the blade into the wrist rather than the palm, making it more difficult for her to tear herself free.
The next witch appeared from the left, her face lit by a shaft of moonlight. Saliva was dribbling down her chin and onto her tattered gown, covered in dark stains. She jabbered curses at me, eager for my blood. Instead she got my blade, which I plucked from my right shoulder sheath, hurling it toward her. The point took her in the throat, throwing her backward. I ran on even faster.
Four more times my blades cut dead flesh, and by now the other witches would be left behind; the slow and those maimed by my blades. But Kernolde and the powerful old one waited somewhere ahead. I wore eight sheathes in those days; each contained a blade. Now only two remained.
I leaped a hidden pit. Then a second. Although they were covered with leaves and mud, I knew they were there. For I had visited this dell many times during the previous months. I had gone there in daylight when the dead witches were dormant and Kernolde was out hunting prey in distant parts of the County. I had sniffed out every inch of the wood, knew every tree, the whereabouts of every pit and trap.
At last the old one barred my path. I came to a halt and awaited her attack. Let her come to me! Her tangled hair reached down to her knees. She was grim indeed, and well named! Maggots and beetles scuttled within that slimy curtain that obscured all of her face but one malevolent eye; that, and an elongated tooth that jutted upward over her top lip almost as far as her left nostril.
She ran toward me, kicking up leaves, her hands extended to rend my face or squeeze my throat. She was fast for a dead witch. Very fast. But not fast enough.
With my left hand, I drew the largest of my blades from its scabbard at my hip. This was not crafted for throwing; it was more akin to a short sword with razor-sharp double edges. I leaped forward to meet her and cut Grim Gertrude’s head clean from her shoulders. It bounced on a root and rolled away. I ran on, glancing back to see her searching among the pile of moldy leaves where it had come to rest.
Now for Kernolde. She was waiting beneath her tree; ropes hung from the branches, ready to bind and hang my body. She was rubbing her back against the bark, drawing strength for the fight. But I was not afraid, and she looked to me like an old bear ridding itself of fleas rather than the dreaded witch assassin feared by all. Running at full pelt directly toward her, I drew the last of my throwing knives and hurled it straight at her throat. End over end it spun, my aim fast and true, but she knocked it to one side with a disdainful flick of her wrist. Undaunted, I increased my pace and prepared to use the long blade. It was then that the ground opened beneath my feet, my heart lurched, and I fell into a hidden pit.
The moon was high, and as I fell I saw the sharp spikes below, waiting to impale me. I twisted desperately, trying to reposition my body, but to avoid every spike was impossible. All I could do was contort myself so that the one spike I couldn’t avoid was the one that would do me the least damage.
The least, did I say? It hurt me enough. Damaged me badly. The spike pierced my outer thigh. Down its length I slid until I hit the ground hard and all the breath left my body, the long blade flying from my hand to lie out of reach.
I lay there trying to breathe and control the pain. The spikes were sharp, thin, and very long—more than six feet—so there was no way I could lift my leg and free it. I cursed my folly. I had thought myself safe, but Kernolde had dug another pit, probably the previous night. No doubt she’d been aware of my forays into the dell and had waited until the last moment to do so.
A witch assassin must constantly adapt and learn from her own mistakes. Even as I lay there, facing my own imminent death, I recognized my stupidity. I had been too confident and had underestimated Kernolde. If I survived, I swore to temper my attitude with a smitch of caution. If . . .
Her broad moonface appeared above, and she looked down at me without uttering a word. Not for nothing did some call her Kernolde the Strangler. Once victorious, she sometimes hung her victims by their thumbs before slowly asphyxiating them. Not this time, though. She had seen what I had achieved already and would take no chances. I would die here.
She began to climb down into the pit. She would place her hands about my throat and squeeze the breath and life from my body. I was calm and ready to die if need be. But I had already thought of something. I had a slim chance of survival.
As she reached the bottom of the pit and began to weave toward me through the spikes, flexing her big, muscular hands, I prepared myself to cope with pain. Not that which she would inflict upon me; that which I chose myself.
My hands were strong, my arms and shoulders capable of exerting extreme leverage. The spikes were thin but sturdy, flexible, not brittle. But I had to try. Seizing the one that pierced my leg, I began to bend it. Back and forth, back and forth I flexed and twisted the spike, each movement sending pain shooting down my leg and up into my body. But I gritted my teeth and worked the spike even harder until it finally yielded and broke, coming away in my hands.
Quickly I lifted my leg clear of the stump and knelt to face Kernolde, my blood running down to soak the earthen floor of the killing pit. In my hands I held the spike like a spear and pointed it toward her. Before her hands could reach my throat, I would pierce her heart.
But the witch assassin had drawn much of her stored magic from the tree, and now she halted and concentrated, beginning to hurl shards of darkness toward me. She tried dread first of all, that dark spell a witch uses to terrify her enemies, holding them in thrall to fear. Terror tried to claim me, and my teeth began to chitter-chatter like those of the dead on the Halloween sabbath. Her magic was strong, but not strong enough. I braced and shrugged aside her spell. Soon its effects receded, and it bothered me no more than the cold wind that blew down from the arctic ice when I slew the wolves and left their bodies on the snow.
Next she used the unquiet dead, the bone-bound, against me, hurling toward me the spirits she had trapped in limbo. They clung to my body, leaning hard against my arm to bring it downward so that it took all of my strength to keep my grip upon the spike. They were strong and fortified by dark magic, one being a strangler that gripped my throat so hard that Kernolde herself might have been squeezing it. The worst of these was an abhuman spirit, the ghost of one born of the Fiend and a witch. He darkened my eyes and thrust his long, cold fingers into my ears so that I thought my head was about to burst, but I fought back and cried out into the darkness and silence.
“I’m still here, Kernolde! Still to be reckoned with. I am Grimalkin, your doom!”
My eyes cleared, and the abhuman’s fingers left my ears with a pop so that sound rushed back. The weight was gone from my arms, and I struggled to my feet, taking aim with the spike. She rushed at me then, that big ugly bear of a woman with strangler’s hands. But my aim was true. I thrust the spear right into her heart, and she died at my feet, her blood soaking into the earth to mix with my own.
After taking what I needed, I lifted her body from the pit using her own ropes. Finally I hung her by her feet so that at dawn the birds could peck her bones clean. That done, I passed through the dell without incident, the dead witches keeping their distance. Grim Gertrude was on her hands and knees, still rooting through the moldy leaves, trying to find her head. Without eyes it would prove difficult.
When I emerged from the trees, the clan was waiting to greet me. I held up Kernolde’s thumb bones and they bowed their heads in acknowledgement of what I’d done. Even Katrise, the head of the coven of thirteen, made obeisance. When they looked up I saw the new respect in their eyes; the fear, too. Now I would begin my quest to one day destroy my enemy, the Fiend.
My name is Grimalkin. I am the witch assassin of the Malkins, and I fear nobody.
Grimalkin
MANY villains and demons have threa
tened the peace and safety of the County: the water witches of the far north; Golgoth, the Lord of Winter, who dwells beneath the bleak southern moor of Anglezarke; Wurmalde, the incomer witch who united the Pendle clans to bring the Fiend himself through the dark portal into our world; Morgan, the necromancer, an ex-apprentice of the Spook who tried to raise Golgoth and bring a perpetual winter to the County. These are just a few of the servants of the dark that Tom Ward has had to face, and there are others whose stories are yet to be told.
But of all these, the most dangerous is the Fiend, the dark personified, and here is one more clue that points toward how the Last Apprentice series will continue.
The highest point in the County is marked by mystery.
It is said that a man died there in a great storm, while binding an evil that threatened the whole world.
Then the ice came again and, when it retreated, even the shapes of the hills and the names of the towns in the valleys were changed.
Now, at that highest point on the fells, no trace remains of what was done so long ago, but its name has endured.
They call it . . .
the Wardstone.
Does this hint at the death of Tom Ward or maybe the Spook? And is that “evil” the Fiend? Only time will tell. There are many more stories to be told before the answers are finally revealed.
THE GALLERY OF VILLAINS
Mother Malkin
Mother Malkin, one of the vilest witches imaginable, has been bound in a pit in the Spook’s garden for years. Then the Spook’s apprentice, Tom Ward, is tricked into giving her blood cakes, and she gains enough strength to break free.
She looked up at me then, lifting into the moonlight a face that was something out of a nightmare, a face that didn’t belong to a living person. Oh, but she was alive all right. You could tell that by the noises she was making eating that rat.
But there was something else about her that terrified me so much that I almost fainted away on the spot. It was her eyes. They were like two hot coals burning inside their sockets, two red points of fire.
And then she spoke to me, her voice something between a whisper and a croak. It sounded like dry, dead leaves rustling together in a late autumn wind.
“It’s a boy,” she said. “I like boys. Come here, boy.”
I didn’t move, of course. I just stood there, rooted to the spot. I felt dizzy and light-headed.
She was still moving toward me and her eyes seemed to be growing larger. Not only her eyes; her whole body seemed to be swelling up. She was expanding into a vast cloud of darkness that within moments would darken my own eyes forever.
Without thinking, I lifted the Spook’s staff. My hands and arms did it, not me.
“What’s that, boy, a wand?” she croaked. Then she chuckled to herself and dropped the dead rat, lifting both her arms toward me.
It was me she wanted. She wanted my blood. In absolute terror, my body began to sway from side to side. I was like a sapling agitated by the first stirrings of a wind, the first storm wind of a dark winter that would never end.
I could have died then, on the bank of that river. There was nobody to help, and I felt powerless to help myself.
But suddenly it happened. . . .
The Spook’s staff wasn’t a wand, but there’s more than one kind of magic. My arms conjured up something special, moving faster than I could even think.
They lifted the staff and swung it hard, catching the witch a terrible blow on the side of the head.
She gave a sort of grunt and fell sideways into the river. There was a big splash, and she went right under but came up very close to the bank, about five or six paces downstream. At first I thought that that was the end of her, but to my horror, her left arm came out of the water and grabbed a tussock of grass. Then the other arm reached for the bank, and she started to drag herself out of the water.
I knew I had to do something before it was too late. So, using all my willpower, I forced myself to take a step toward her as she heaved more of her body up onto the bank.
When I got close enough, I did something that I can still remember vividly. I still have nightmares about it. But what choice did I have? It was her or me. Only one of us was going to survive.
(For the full story, read The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch)
Bony Lizzie and Tusk
Bony Lizzie, Mother Malkin’s granddaughter, uses bone magic, and raised the young witch Alice, who becomes Tom’s ally.
Tusk, Mother Malkin’s son, is a monster of incredible strength. His name comes from the two yellow tusks that curve upward on either side of his nose. He lives with Bony Lizzie and obeys her without question, no matter how terrible a deed she asks of him.
There, standing at the summit of the slope ahead, was a tall figure dressed in black, carrying a long staff. It was the Spook, all right, but somehow he looked different. His hood was thrown back and his hair, lit by the rays of the rising sun, seemed to be streaming back from his head like orange tongues of flame.
Tusk gave a sort of roar and ran up the slope toward him, brandishing his blade, with Bony Lizzie close at his heels. They weren’t bothered about us for the moment. They knew who their main enemy was. They could deal with us later.
By now Alice had come to a halt, too, so I took a couple of shaky steps to bring myself level with her. We both watched as Tusk made his final charge, lifting his curved blade and bellowing angrily as he ran.
The Spook had been standing as still as a statue, but then in response he took two big strides down the slope toward him and lifted his staff high. Aiming it like a spear, he drove it hard at Tusk’s head. Just before it made contact with his forehead, there was a sort of click and a red flame appeared at the very tip. There was a heavy thud as it struck home. The curved knife went up in the air, and Tusk’s body fell like a sack of potatoes. I knew he was dead even before he hit the ground.
Next the Spook cast his staff to one side and reached inside his cloak. When his left hand appeared again, it was clutching something that he cracked high in the air like a whip. It caught the sun, and I knew it was a silver chain.
Bony Lizzie turned and tried to run, but it was too late: The second time he cracked the chain, it was followed almost immediately by a thin, high, metallic sound. The chain began to fall, shaping itself into a spiral of fire to bind itself tightly around Bony Lizzie. She gave one great shriek of anguish, then fell to the ground.
(For the full story, read The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch)
The Bane
The Bane is an ancient, malevolent spirit—the only one of its kind—that is bound behind the Silver Gate in the catacombs beneath Priestown’s cathedral.
The head of the Bane grew larger, the face becoming even more hideous, the chin lengthening and curving upward to meet the hooked nose. The dark cloud was boiling downward, forming flesh so that now a neck was visible and the beginnings of broad, powerful, muscular shoulders. But instead of skin, they were covered in rough green scales.
I knew what the Spook was waiting for. The moment the chest was clearly defined, he would strike straight for the heart within. Even as I watched, the boiling cloud descended farther to form the body as far down as the waist.
But I was mistaken! The Spook didn’t use his blade. As if appearing from nowhere, the silver chain was in his left hand, and he raised his arm to hurl it at the Bane.
I’d seen him do it before. I’d watched him throw it at the witch, Bony Lizzie, so that it formed a perfect spiral and dropped upon her, binding her arms to her sides. She’d fallen to the ground and could do nothing but lie there snarling, the chain enclosing her body and tight against her teeth.
The same would have happened here, I’m sure of it, and it would have been the Bane’s turn to lie there helplessly. But at the very moment when the Spook prepared to hurl the silver chain, Alice lurched to her feet and tore off her blindfold.
I know she didn’t mean to do it, but somehow she got between the
Spook and his target and spoiled his aim. Instead of landing over the Bane’s head, the silver chain fell against its shoulder. At its touch, the creature screamed out in agony and the chain fell to the floor.
But it wasn’t over yet, and the Spook snatched up his staff. As he held it high, preparing to drive it into the Bane, there was a sudden click, and the retractable blade, made from an alloy containing silver, was now bared, glinting in the candlelight. The blade that I’d watched him sharpening at Heysham. I’d seen him use it once before, when he’d faced Tusk, the son of the old witch, Mother Malkin.
Now the Spook stabbed his staff hard and fast, straight at the Bane, aiming for its heart. It tried to twist away but was too late to avoid the thrust completely. The blade pierced its left shoulder, and it screamed out in agony. Alice backed away, a look of terror on her face, while the Spook pulled back his staff and readied it for a second thrust, his face grim and determined.
But suddenly, both candles were snuffed out, plunging the chamber and tunnel into darkness.
(For the full story, read The Last Apprentice: Curse of the Bane)
Morgan
Morgan is a failed apprentice of the Spook’s who has turned to the dark, using the creatures of the dark to make his own powers greater.
“The dead have had their lives. It’s over for them. But we’re still living and can use them. We can profit from them. I want what Gregory owes me. I want his house in Chipenden with that big library of books that contains so much knowledge. And then there’s something else. Something even more important. Something that he’s stolen from me. He has a grimoire, a book of spells and rituals, and you’re going to help me get it back. In return, you can continue your apprenticeship, with me training you. And I’ll teach you those things he’s never even dreamed of. I’ll put real power at your fingertips!”
The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Page 277