The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection

by Joseph Delaney

  Merlin

  Merlin is perhaps the most famous mage of all, the power behind the throne of Arthur, a warlike Celtic king. Merlin had a human mother, but his father was reportedly a demon, and from him he inherited magical powers, including the ability to shift his shape into different people or even animals.

  In later life he increased his existing power by learning to use the energy of a dragon, which is a very dangerous thing to do. He then fell in love with the witch Nimueh, who pried out his magical secrets, drained him of power, and used it against him. She trapped Merlin within the aura of a powerful dragon. He still sleeps and will remain there until the end of the world.

  Merlin

  TYPES OF MAGES

  Goat Mages

  Goat mages dwell in Ireland and derive their power through Pan magic, routinely sacrificing goats to that Old God.1 The idea is that, through worship and blood letting, Pan will grant them power. Fortunately, Pan is unreliable, and the mage is more likely to be driven insane. When, on occasion, Pan does reward the mage, the power received is used with unpredictable and devastating effects. (Pan magic is akin to madness.)

  Goat mages have a major annual event, which is very sinister and dangerous. A goat is tethered to a high platform and worshipped for a week and a day. Human beings are sacrificed to the cloven-hoofed creature, which is gradually possessed by Pan, the horned god. Soon the goat acquires the power of speech, stands upon its hind legs, and grows larger, dominating the proceedings and demanding more and more sacrifices.

  A Goat Mage

  The power derived from those eight days of bloodshed lasts the mages for almost a year. Some years Pan is not contacted and the mages must flee, scattering themselves to the winds. They are then totally vulnerable, and their enemies, a federation of landowners to the southwest of that land, hunt them down. But in a good year, when their power is in the ascendancy, they are greatly feared. Then they travel unchecked, seek out their enemies, and put them to death, stealing their land and wealth. The goat mages and the federation are in a perpetual state of war.

  Kobalos Mages

  The Kobalos are not human. They walk upright but have the appearance of a fox or a wolf. The body is covered with dark hair; the face and hands are shaved according to custom; and the mage wears a long black coat with a slit in the back to accommodate his tail, which can function as an extra limb.

  These mages are solitary creatures who shun their fellow citizens and usually dwell beyond the fringes of the frozen Kobalos domain, which is far to the north of the continent known as Europa. Each one “farms” a haizda, a territory that he has marked out as his own. Within it there are several hundred humans, living in hamlets, villages, and farms. He rules by fear and magecraft, harvesting souls and accumulating power. He usually lives in an old, gnarled ghanbala tree, sleeping by day but traveling the boundaries of his haizda by night, taking the blood of humans and animals for sustenance. He can shift his shape, taking on the appearance of animals, and can also vary his size. This type of mage is also a formidable warrior whose favorite weapon is a sabre.

  The Kobalos are a fierce, warlike race who, with the exception of their mages, inhabit Valkarky, a city deep within the arctic circle.

  The name Valkarky means the City of the Petrified Tree; it is filled with all types of abominations that have been created by dark magic. Its walls are constructed and renewed by creatures that never sleep; creatures that spit soft stone from their mouths. The Kobalos believe that their city will not stop growing until it covers the entire world.2

  The Kobalos

  Necromancers

  While a spook deals with the unquiet dead as a routine part of his job, talking to them and sending them on their way to the light, a necromancer does the opposite.3 He often uses a grimoire, a book of spells and rituals, and binds the dead so that they serve his purposes and help him to line his pockets with silver. The bereaved will pay hard-earned money for a brief conversation—or even a glimpse of their loved ones.

  He also uses the dead as spies and to terrorize his enemies. Most often it is just a case of trapping graveside lingerers, or those bound to their bones, because they’ve committed some terrible crime.

  Rarely, some very powerful necromancers can trap the dead in limbo and stop them from reaching the light; they can then summon them at will into the presence of the living. Initially this is done by means of a pentacle, which is chalked on the floor, making sure that all five points of the star are of equal length and that a black candle4 is positioned upon each one. After the correct spell has been cast, reading accurately from the grimoire, the lost soul appears in the pentacle and is trapped there until the necromancer has completed further spells of binding.5 The soul is then dismissed and goes back into limbo, with no chance of finding its way to the light. After this, the pentacle is no longer required and the necromancer can summon the ghost to his side with a simple command.

  MORGAN’S FIRST ATTEMPT TO RAISE GOLGOTH

  My apprentice Morgan had many faults, but the two worst were laziness and an extreme lust for power. He was approaching the end of the third year of his apprenticeship when he attempted something that could have had terrible consequences for the inhabitants of the County and beyond.

  At the time he was tall and strong for his sixteen years, and already giving me much cause for concern. As well as the two serious faults listed above, he was rebellious and imperious, always believing that he was right. It all came to a head when we were staying at my winter house in Anglezarke.

  The Hursts, a family who had fostered Morgan until he was almost thirteen, also lived nearby, and theirs was a tragic tale. Within a year of his return, he and their daughter Eveline had fallen in love. Although they weren’t blood relatives, the parents considered them to be brother and sister and reacted violently, beating both children and making their lives unbearable. As a result, the distraught Eveline drowned herself in the miserable stretch of gray water that borders their farm.

  Morgan was the seventh son of a seventh son and the daughter of a woman called Emily Burns, whom I’d once been very close to. So as a favor to her, and to help Morgan and get him away from that dreadful situation, where his adoptive parents held him responsible for their daughter’s death, I took him on as my apprentice. It proved to be one of the biggest mistakes of my long life.

  During our winter visits to Anglezarke, unlikely though it might seem, Morgan seemed to grow closer to the Hursts. He took to visiting them at Moor View Farm and even spent the occasional night there. I didn’t object, thinking that his presence might afford them some consolation. Perhaps they’d realized that they had played a part in causing Eveline to take her own life and were trying to make amends in some way.

  I was careless—I realize that now. The boy often wandered onto the bleak moor and was obsessed by an ancient burial mound called the Round Loaf. Beneath it, supposedly, was a secret chamber where the ancients once worshipped one of the Old Gods. This deity was Golgoth, the Lord of Winter, and it was believed that the meddling of those ancient priests as they tried to raise their god brought about the last Ice Age, when Golgoth had stayed in our world, freezing it in the grip of an extended winter that had resulted in thousands of deaths.

  I’d caught Morgan digging into the mound more than once. He didn’t find the secret chamber then but discovered something else that I hadn’t even suspected was there. Morgan had been preparing for months to attempt a terrible summoning; as his master, I failed to guess the danger. As a spook, I must confess that I failed the County.

  Late one winter’s night there was a loud rapping on the back door of my winter house; on the doorstep was Mr. Hurst, wrapped up well against the snow that was beginning to whirl down out of the dark clouds above.

  “Come inside, man, before you freeze to death!” I cried, welcoming him into the kitchen. “What brings you out on such a night?”

  The walk up from the farm was difficult in winter, but when a blizzard threatened, it was dang
erous to life. Even someone with a lifetime of local knowledge might get lost in the snow, which would mean certain death before morning.

  “We need you back at the farm quickly!” Mr Hurst told me. “Something terrible’s happening. . . .” At that, his jaw clamped shut and his whole body began to tremble.

  “Take your time,” I said, sitting him down on a stool close to the fire and handing him the cup of the hot broth I’d prepared for my supper. “Your need may be urgent, but I must know exactly what I’m dealing with.”

  So, as the old farmer sipped his broth and got some warmth back into his bones, he began to tell his tale.

  “It’s that daft lad Morgan,” he said. “He’s locked himself in his room and is up to no good. He’s using dark magic, I’m sure of it!”

  “His bedroom?” I asked.

  “Nay, the front room, where he writes things in his notebook and does his reading.”

  ‘“Reading? What reading?” I asked. Writing up what he’d learned in his notebook was only to be expected, but I brought few books with me from Chipenden to my cold, damp house on Anglezarke Moor; those I did were kept in the warmest room and rarely allowed out of my sight. My books are precious to me, a store of knowledge that I fear to lose.

  “He came home with a big leather book a few weeks ago, and he’s hardly had his nose out of it since. But tonight he locked himself in the room. First he carried a sack in there; then he dragged the farm dog in. Now he won’t answer the door, and the poor animal keeps whining. It sounds terrified out of its skin. There are other sounds, too. And the whole house seems to be getting really cold despite all the logs we heap on the fire. Our breath is steaming and ice is forming on the outside of the door of Morgan’s room.”

  “What other sounds are there?” I cried, jumping to my feet. Suddenly I’d glimpsed how great the danger might be.

  “Bells keep ringing. Not small bells. One sounds like a big church bell, so loud that the wooden floors vibrate with each peal. And from time to time there’s a deep grinding sound that seems to come from right under the house.”

  At last, convinced of the need for urgency, I wasted no further time in leading Mr. Hurst out into the night. We headed down the steep clough and onto the slope that led off the snow-clad moor. White flakes were dancing into our faces, and it was bitterly cold. It was a good hour before we had finally trudged across to Moor View Farm. No sooner had we crossed the threshold than I realized that the old farmer had not exaggerated. The farmhouse was unnaturally cold, that strange chill that warns us spooks that something from the dark is close at hand.

  As we approached the locked room, I heard an unnerving sound from deep beneath the house: a grinding, crunching, grating roar, as if some huge beast were munching on rock. We both became still, feeling the boards move beneath our feet. When the noise subsided, I rapped hard on the door and called out Morgan’s name loudly.

  There was no reply. On the outside of the wooden door, rivulets of ice had formed. Suddenly the noise began again, as if some monster were rising up from the depths beneath, clawing aside rocks and earth in its eagerness to be free of its subterranean prison.

  I threw my shoulder against the door again and again, desperation lending me strength. At last the hinges sheered away from the wood and the door burst open. I stepped into a cold more severe than that on the bleak moor from which we’d just descended.

  I’d been in that room before and knew its layout. Longer than it was wide, it had one window on the far wall, shrouded with heavy black curtains. There was a big table with two chairs; these usually occupied the center of the room, but now they’d been pushed right back against the wall. Morgan was sitting inside a huge pentacle that he had chalked on the floor. At each of its five outer points was a black candle. Their yellow flickering light filled the room and showed me exactly what I was dealing with.

  In his left hand Morgan held a grimoire, a book of dark magic incantations. It was bound in green leather, and there was a silver pentacle embossed on its cover. Where he had gotten it from I didn’t know, but he was chanting from it, reading words in the Old Tongue—the language of the ancients who first made their home in the County. His accent was far from perfect, but close enough to make the incantation potent, and although it was invisible, I sensed that something was taking shape just beyond the pentacle, between Morgan and the dark curtains at the window.

  Behind me, in the open doorway, I heard Mrs. Hurst scream with fright, and her husband give a deep groan of pure terror. I too was very afraid, but something greater than fear for my own safety urged me forward and gave me the courage I needed. It was a realization of what threatened; the knowledge that the whole County was just a few seconds away from a disaster of almost unimaginable proportions.

  There was one other creature in the room: the farm dog. It was chained to a hook in the wall just by the curtains. Flat on its belly, its ears back against its skull, the poor animal was whining softly and trembling all over. The dog was the blood sacrifice that Morgan was offering in order to bring Golgoth into our world. He was trying to raise the Lord of Winter and had almost succeeded.

  The cold intensified, blasting toward me; it felt as if sharp knives were cutting into my face. But although my foolish apprentice was far closer to the emerging Old God, he was protected by the pentacle.

  I ran forward and kicked over one of the candles, thus destroying its protective power. Immediately Morgan’s eyes widened as he felt the first icy fingers of cold reach toward him. But lust for power had filled him with madness, and although he rose to his feet, he continued to chant from the grimoire.

  I stepped inside the pentacle and struck his wrists hard with my staff. The book flew from his hands. He stared at me, his expression a mixture of anger, bewilderment, and fear. For a moment he seemed in a trance, unaware of who he was or what he was trying to do. But then his eyes widened in alarm and he looked across to where Golgoth had begun to materialize.

  Again that roaring filled the house, the bare stone flags beneath our feet beginning to move. As the noise reached its climax, the dog gave a shrill cry, shuddered, and lay still. It was dead—not because Golgoth had touched it with his cold deadly fingers. It had died of fright.

  Gradually the noises subsided, the cold began to lessen, and the fear that had been squeezing my heart slowly released its grip. I had knocked the grimoire from Morgan’s hand before he could complete the ritual. Golgoth had been forced to return to the dark. For now, the County was safe.

  It was the end of Morgan’s apprenticeship to me. I couldn’t keep him on after he’d done that. I should really have bound him in a pit. After all, I do that to witches. But his mother begged me not to, and I relented. He turned fully to the dark after that.6

  Shamans

  A shaman uses animism magic and employs the spirit of an animal as his familiar. He feeds it some of his life essence in return for its guidance and protection. Using this, a shaman projects his soul from his body and can venture far in the twinkling of an eye; in addition to his journeys to earthly locations, he routinely ventures into limbo. One famous shaman called Lucius Grim crossed over to the domain of the dark several times, until his soul was finally devoured by a demon. His body continued to breathe for many years afterward, but it was just an empty vessel.

  Not all shamans are malevolent. Using their animal spirit, some practice healing; others attempt to control the weather, bringing rainfall to alleviate droughts.

  Grimoires

  These are ancient books, full of spells and rituals, used to invoke the dark. Sometimes they are employed by witches, but they are mainly used by mages, and their spells have to be followed to the letter, or death can result.7

  Many of these famous texts have been lost (the Patrixa and the Key of Solomon). The most dangerous and powerful grimoires, however, were written in the Old Tongue by the first men of the County. Primarily used to summon demons, these books contain terrible dark magic. Most have been deliberately destroyed or
hidden far from human sight.

  The most mysterious, and reputedly most deadly, of these is the Doomdryte. Some believe that this book was dictated word for word by the Fiend to a mage called Lukrasta. That grimoire contains just one long dark magic incantation. If successfully completed (in conjunction with certain rituals), it would allow a mage to achieve immortality, invulnerability, and godlike powers.

  Fortunately no one has ever succeeded, as it requires intense concentration and great endurance: The book takes thirteen hours to read aloud, and you cannot pause for rest.

  One word mispronounced brings about the immediate death of the mage. Lukrasta was the first to attempt the ritual, and the first to die. Others followed in his foolish footsteps.

  We must hope that the Doomdryte remains lost for- ever.

  The Pendle witches have their own grimoires, but they never contain the ritual for summoning the Fiend. They consider this too dangerous to be written down: it is learned by heart and passed down through the clans from mother to daughter.8

  A Pendle Witch

  Witches

  Witches have walked the earth from the earliest times, and the development of human language has allowed them to weave ever more complex curses, spells, and rituals. By trial and error they have also learned the potential of plants to either poison or cure. Some witches are benign healers, following a path toward the light and helping their communities; others choose to ally themselves with the dark, lured to sell their souls in exchange for the ability to wield dark magic.

  HOW TO TEST A WITCH