We thanked Mistress Wicklow for breakfast, took our leave of her, and strolled back toward the lake. It was a nice day, but there was little warmth in the sun. It would be a long wait until nightfall. I just wanted to get all this over with and return to the mill.
“Quite a deep cut,” Arkwright said, kneeling down to gaze at his face in the mirror of the lake. “Don’t think it’ll scar, though. Wouldn’t want it to spoil my good looks!”
I laughed.
He was on his feet in a flash and cuffed me hard across the back of the head, sending me reeling forward. I almost fell into the water.
“It’s not that funny, Master Ward,” he said angrily. “I’m your master and you’re just the apprentice. I expect a little respect.”
“I thought you were making a joke!” I protested.
“Blood and bone!” he cursed. “I was—but it was a very mild joke. You laughed too long and too loud.”
He suddenly gave me a wolfish grin, showing a mouthful of teeth. “Get yourself ready, Master Ward. We shouldn’t neglect your training. Prepare to defend yourself!”
With that, he picked up his staff and attacked me, trying to drive me into the lake. We fought for almost an hour, and by the end of it, muscles I didn’t know I had were complaining and I’d two more bruises to add to my collection. But Arkwright never did manage to force me into the lake, so that counted as some sort of victory.
“We’ll do things differently tonight,” he said as we rested on the bridge once more. “You chase her toward the mound. I’ll lie in wait among the trees close to it and block her escape.”
It seemed a good plan—that is, if the witch didn’t somehow manage to long sniff the threat. Witches could usually to this to see danger coming. But as seventh sons of seventh sons, spooks were usually immune to this power—though with a witch about whom we knew little, nothing was certain.
That night, the first cry of the banshee witch told me that she was very close! This time she had farther to run in order to reach the safety of the mound. I might even be able to catch her before the edge of the wood. So, putting my silver chain in my pocket and gripping my staff, I ran toward the sound.
There was often an edge of competition between my temporary master and me; it would be really pleasing to bind her with my chain before he could intercept her, I thought. So I ran just as fast as I could in the direction of the cry. She would hear me coming, but I didn’t care. I was on the attack. My heart was pounding, and I was filled with exhilaration.
The second cry came very soon after the first. The witch would be using some kind of curse that demanded a precise form of words. Surely there had to be a limit to how fast she could utter it? But, to my dismay, the third cry echoed over the lake before I reached her. I groaned, remembering Mistress Wicklow’s blue-tinged lips and breathlessness. Now she would have suffered further pain.
I drove myself on even harder. I could hear the witch running through the trees ahead. I had to catch her. We hadn’t managed to stop her uttering her third cry tonight—what chance had we of doing that tomorrow, when it would kill her victim? I wondered.
I could see her just ahead of me now, and I was closing fast, readying my silver chain. As I was about to cast it, she swerved to the left so that a tree lay between me and my target.
Suddenly a burly figure rose up to confront her. Arkwright! They seemed to collide . . . he fell . . . she staggered and ran on. We were in the open now, beyond the trees, making straight for the mound. Just as I was about to cast my chain, the light blazed out again. Again I was blinded, but this time I kept going. The witch’s silhouette came into view against the round yellow doorway. Then, all at once, darkness and silence.
For a moment I didn’t realize what had happened. The air was warmer and absolutely still. Lights flared on the rocky walls—I saw black candles in brackets. And furniture! My eyes hadn’t deceived me. There was a small table and two wooden straight-backed chairs. I was inside the burial mound!
I’d followed the witch through the magical door, and there she was, standing directly ahead of me, still gripping the rolled-up burial shroud, an expression of anger and bemusement on her face. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and slow my pounding heart.
“What a fool you be, to follow me!” cried the witch.
“Do you always talk in rhyme?” I asked.
The witch didn’t reply, because as I spoke, I cast my silver chain, and it brought her to her knees, the links tight against her mouth to silence her. It was a perfect shot. I’d bound the witch—but now I had a real problem.
There was no visible door. How was I going to get out of the mound?
I searched the inside of the chamber carefully, running my fingers over the place where I thought I’d entered, but it was seamless. I was in a rocky cave without an entrance. Arkwright was on the outside; I was trapped inside. Had I bound the witch—or had she bound me? I looked at her. She was still gripping the shroud; despite the chain, she hadn’t dropped it.
I knelt close to her, staring into her eyes, which seemed to crinkle with amusement. Beneath the chain, her mouth was pulled away from her teeth; half smile, half grimace. But her face wasn’t that of the hideous hag I’d glimpsed as she washed the shroud. It could have belonged to any young countrywoman passed without a second glance at a market. Perhaps she’d used some spell to try and scare me off—a mild form of dread, perhaps?
I eased the chain from her mouth so that she could speak. It was a dangerous thing to do, but I urgently needed to question her, make her tell me how I could get out. But I soon realized that it was a big mistake.
Her lips free of the chain, the witch was free to speak dark magic spells, and she began to do that immediately. She uttered three quick phrases, each in a language I’d never heard before, each ending in a rhyme. Then she opened her mouth very wide, and a thick black cloud of smoke erupted from it.
I sprang to my feet and staggered backward. The cloud continued to grow, to the point where her whole face was engulfed. It reminded me of the blood from the shroud that had stained the water of the lake. Now the air between us grew dark and tainted.
The cloud was becoming even denser and taking on a shape. There were wings. Outstretched claws. A ravenous beak. It had become a black crow. The witch’s open mouth was a portal to the dark! It was the Morrigan!
But this was no longer a bird of normal size and proportions. It was nothing like the seemingly ordinary crow that had swooped through the trees to attack Bill Arkwright. This creature was immense; it was distorted and twisted into something grotesque. The beak, legs, and claws were elongated, stretching out toward me, while the head and body remained relatively small.
But then the wings grew, too, until they reached out on either side of the monstrous bird to fill all the available space. They flapped violently, battering against the walls of the chamber and smashing the table so that it broke in half. Its claws struck out at me. I ducked, and they raked the wall over my head, gouging deep grooves into the rock.
For a moment I was filled with panic. A spook has little chance of defeating one of the old gods. I was going to die here, I was sure. But then I took a deep breath and calmed myself. My master had taught me well, and I knew that the first and most important thing to do was control my fear. I’d faced great dangers from the dark before and survived. I could do so again. . . .
So I concentrated hard, feeling the strength rise within me. And confidence began to replace fear. There was anger, too.
I acted without conscious decision, with a speed that astonished even me. I stepped forward, closer to the Morrigan, released the retractable blade, and swept my staff across from left to right. The blade cut deep into the bird’s breast, slicing a bloody red line through the black feathers.
There was a tremendous scream. The Morrigan convulsed and contracted, shrinking rapidly until she was no larger than my fist. Then she vanished—leaving behind only a few black feathers smeared with blood that fluttered sl
owly to the ground.
The witch shook her head, her expression one of acute astonishment. “That’s not possible!” she cried. “Who are you to be able to do such a thing?”
“My name is Tom Ward,” I told her. “I’m a spook’s apprentice, and my job is to fight the dark.”
She smiled grimly. “Well, you’ve fought your last fight, boy. There is no way you can escape this place. Soon the goddess will return. You will not find it so easy a second time.”
I smiled and looked down at the blood-splattered feathers littering the floor. Then I looked up and stared her straight in the eye, doing my best not to blink. “We’ll see. Next time I might cut off her head.”
I was bluffing, of course; trying to appear more confident than I felt. I had to persuade this witch to open the door of the mound.
“You’re a fool, boy. She’ll return, slay you, then carry off your soul to her kingdom in the dark!”
“In that case, you may suffer the same fate!” I warned. “You brought her into a dangerous situation that caused her pain. She might feel that should earn its own reward.”
I watched expressions flicker across the witch’s face: anger, uncertainty, and then fear. The old gods could be vindictive and vengeful, even toward their own servants. There was some truth in what I’d just said, and the witch knew it.
“So why don’t you open the door so that we can leave this mound?” I continued.
“What? So that you can kill me or bind me forever? Which fate do you have in store for me?”
“Neither. Once outside I’ll release you from the chain. But, in return, you must promise to stop cursing Mistress Wicklow and go back to Ireland.”
“Why worry about her? She and her man were landowners who cared nothing at all for their servants and tenants. Six years ago, when the crops failed, they let the people starve. They could have helped, but they didn’t.”
“I know nothing about that. But you’ve killed her husband. Isn’t that enough?” I asked.
The witch frowned, but then she allowed the shroud to fall from her left hand to the floor. “Help me to my feet!” she commanded.
I did as she asked, and she hobbled toward the rock wall and muttered words in the same strange language as before. There was a flare of pale light, and the doorway opened before us. Gripping the chain, I pulled her forward into the cold night air. The moon bathed the mound behind us in silver light.
“Release me!” she commanded.
“Will you keep your word?”
“Yes, but will you keep yours?”
I nodded and, with a flick of my wrist, released the witch from the chain. She smiled. “Don’t ever visit my land, boy. The Morrigan is much more powerful there. And she is vengeful. She would torment you beyond anything you can imagine. Whatever you do, stay away from Ireland.”
With that, the banshee witch turned her back on me and made a sign in the air, muttering under her breath. Beyond her, the door faded and became the sheer grassy wall of the burial mound.
I think she was about to turn back and say something to me, but she never got the chance.
Something flew through the air toward her and buried itself between her shoulder blades. She fell down in the mud, a knife buried to the hilt in her back. She groaned, twitched twice, and lay still.
Bill Arkwright walked toward me from the edge of the trees, carrying his staff and bag.
“You did a deal with her, Master Ward? Can’t blame you, I suppose. How else could you have gotten out of that mound?”
“She would have kept her promise!” I protested. “She was going home. She wasn’t going to complete the curse. . . .”
“You’ve just the word of a witch for that,” Arkwright said. “What I’ve just done makes things more certain. Now she can’t complete the curse. Am I right?”
“But I gave her my word—”
“Blood and bone!” cursed Arkwright. “Grow up, boy! This is what we do. We kill witches. We fight the dark. If you can’t stomach the job, go back to your farm!”
I didn’t speak. I just stared down at the dead witch.
“What’s done is done,” said Arkwright, pulling the knife out of her back. “If you’re squeamish, don’t linger here.”
So I walked back through the trees and waited for him on the bridge. Dead witches could scratch their way to the surface of their graves and go hunting for victims. He was cutting out her heart to make sure that she couldn’t come back.
We went to see Mistress Wicklow, and Arkwright told her most of what had happened. She seemed even more breathless than the previous night but felt confident that she’d now make a full recovery. My master told her where the dead witch was, and she made arrangements to have her buried close to the mound. Then she paid him, and we took our leave of her.
We walked back to the mill in silence. I was far from happy with what had happened and couldn’t bring myself to chat to Arkwright; he, too, seemed lost in his own thoughts.
At last we waded through the salt moat that protects his garden from water witches and other creatures of the dark and headed for the side door. Before we reached it, Claw started to bark.
“Well, at least somebody’s speaking to me!” Arkwright said. But when we went in, Claw didn’t bound toward him as I’d expected. She was otherwise occupied. . . .
“Good girl! Good girl!” Arkwright said, kneeling down to pat her on the head.
She was feeding her newborn pups. There were two of them.
“So what shall we call these two little beauties, Master Ward?”
I smiled. “Blood and Bone?” I suggested.
Arkwright grinned up at me. “Perfect!” he exclaimed. “Couldn’t have chosen better myself. That’s what I’ll call them.”
The pups had stopped feeding now. Arkwright got to his feet and reached down into his bag. “Better safe than sorry,” he said. “And a nice treat for a new mother!”
Then he pulled out the witch’s heart and threw it to Claw.
I had other adventures with Bill Arkwright, but that’s the one I’ll never forget. It’s because of what Mistress Wicklow said: that those cut or scratched by the Morrigan are marked for death—they always die within the year.
And Bill Arkwright did die less than a year later, sacrificing his life in Greece so that the Spook, Alice, and I could escape.
Perhaps we paid a high price for dealing with that banshee witch.
Credits
COVER ART © 2010 BY PATRICK ARRASMITH
COVER DESIGN BY CHAD W. BECKERMAN AND PAUL ZAKRIS
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
The Last Apprentice: A Coven of Witches
Copyright © 2010 by Joseph Delaney
First published in 2009 in Great Britain by The Bodley Head, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, under the title Witches.
First published in 2010 in the United States by Greenwillow Books.
The right of Joseph Delaney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Tim Foley and Patrick Arrasmith
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Ca
taloging-in-Publication Data
Delaney, Joseph, (date).
[Spook’s stories, witches]
A coven of witches / by Joseph Delaney ; illustrations by Patrick Arrasmith.
p. cm. — (The last apprentice)
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: Separate tales reveal the backgrounds of four terrifying witches, including Alice and the Spook’s love, Meg.
ISBN 978-0-06-196038-3 (trade bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-06-196039-0 (lib. bdg.)
[1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Short stories.] I. Arrasmith, Patrick, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.D373183Cov 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009036048
10 11 12 13 14 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062120908
Dedication
To Marie—
J.D.
To Anne—
J.H.
Contents
Dedication
To the Reader
The Dark
Boggarts
The Old Gods
Mages
Witches
The Unquiet Dead
Demons
Water Beasts
Elemental Spirits
Mysterious Deaths in the County
Final Words
Copyright
To the Reader
My name is John Gregory and I’ve walked the length and breadth of the County for more years than I care to remember, defending it against ghosts, ghasts, boggarts, witches, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. The trade I follow is that of a spook, and all those who practice our craft must be the seventh son of a seventh son, with the ability to see and talk to the dead, and with a degree of immunity against witches.
Each spook takes on and trains apprentices so that the fight against the dark may go on from generation to generation. And an important part of what we do is accrue, record, and share knowledge so that we may learn from the past. What follows is my Bestiary—my personal account of the denizens of the dark I’ve encountered, together with the lessons I have learned and the mistakes I have made. I have held nothing back, and my hope is that the spook who follows me will continue to keep this record of the practical ways in which we deal with the dark.
The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Page 288