We waited in silence. There were faint rustles in the distant trees, but nothing alive or dead ventured into the open. After about five minutes, I instructed Thorne to try again. Once more we waited while the wind sighed through the branches of the oak. It was a night of sudden showers, and at that moment a particularly heavy one was falling; for a while all we could hear was rain drumming on the ground. The shower passed as quickly as it had started, and the moon came out briefly. It was then that I saw the dark shape crawling toward us across the clearing. Without doubt it was a dead witch. I could hear her sniffing and snuffling, her nose almost touching the wet grass, her gown a slithering shadow. Only when she lifted her face into the moonlight did I recognize her as Agnes. Death had already changed her for the worse.
She came in under cover of the branches, gasping and wheezing, and pulled herself up into a sitting position, resting her back against the tree trunk. For a while nobody spoke, and I listened to the drops of water dripping from leaf to leaf on their long, slow journey to the ground.
I looked at Agnes with my keen eyes, and she was a sorry sight indeed. Some dead witches are strong and can run for miles, hunting human prey; others are weak, and theirs is a miserable existence crawling through the slime and leaf mold, searching for small creatures such as rats and mice. If this was indeed Agnes’s existence now, I pitied her. She had always been a proud woman. Although at first glance her cottage had appeared cluttered, her bottles and jars were placed in perfect order upon her shelves, and her house was immaculate—never even a speck of dust in sight. Very few witches cared about cleanliness; Agnes had been the exception. She had changed her clothes every day, and her pointy shoes were so highly polished that you could see your reflection in them.
Thorne looked shocked and momentarily covered her face with her hands. I too was dismayed to see the change that had befallen Agnes in so short a time. Her tattered dress was caked in dirt. No doubt she’d been crawling through brambles in search of prey. As for her once clean, shining hair, it was now greasy and infested with wriggling white maggots, while her gaunt face was smeared with mud and blood.
There was no point in trying to pretend that things were better than they appeared. Agnes had always been kind but plain speaking, so I didn’t mince my words, even though she was dead.
“It sorrows me to see you in this state, Agnes,” I told her kindly. “Is there anything that we can do to help?”
“I never thought I would come to this,” she said, shaking her head so that maggots dropped from her hair into her lap. “I was strong in life and hoped to be the same in death. But I thirst! I thirst so much and can never get enough blood. I am not strong enough to hunt large creatures or humans. Small rodents are all I can manage. Rabbits are too fast.”
“Don’t the other dead help? Don’t the strong help those weaker than themselves?” asked Thorne.
Agnes shook her head. “Dead witches hunt alone and care for naught but themselves.”
“Then at least tonight your thirst will be quenched,” I said. I turned to Thorne. “Bring Agnes something large.”
In an instant the girl had sped away.
“I still have the Fiend’s head,” I told Agnes. “It is in all our interests that it remains detached from his body. Will you help? Our enemies are approaching, and we need to take refuge in the dell. We need some of our dead sisters to fight alongside us.”
“Others rule here,” Agnes croaked. “I am feeble, and my word counts for little within that dark place.”
“Are those within for the Fiend or against him?” I asked.
“Dead witches, be they strong or weak, care for nothing but blood. If they think at all, it is blood that fills their thoughts. I hope that I will never be like them. My memories of my life are precious, and I want to hold on to them for as long as I can. But you needn’t attempt to win them to your cause. They will kill anything living that enters the dell—you too, if they can catch you.”
“How many of the strong ones are close at hand?” I said, listening to the rustles and scratching sounds from the dell, which told me that some of the weaker witches were close by.
“Only two. The third has been away for more than two nights but could return at any time.”
“It is as I thought. So if we can get to the center of the dell before our enemies arrive, the dead will effectively be our allies, whether they wish it or not.”
I looked up and saw that Thorne was crossing the clearing toward us. Each hand held a large wriggling hare. She reached us and held out one to Agnes. The dead witch seized the frightened animal, then immediately sank her teeth into its neck and began to suck its blood. Within moments it had stopped twitching; it was drained and dead. Then she started on the second one.
“You’re a good girl, Thorne!” Agnes cried when she’d finished. “That’s the sweetest blood I’ve sipped since coming to this miserable dell.”
“I wish I could do more for you,” Thorne said. “You’ve always been good to me, Agnes, and it pains me to see you like this.”
Suddenly I sensed danger and sniffed the wind. Our enemies were close at hand.
“They’re no more than ten minutes away,” I told Thorne. “It’s a risk, but we need to take refuge in the dell now, before it’s too late.” I turned to Agnes. “Follow as best you can.”
I led Thorne to the edge of the dell. “There are still pits and traps—those crafted by Kernolde many years ago. Some I will avoid; others I’ll leap. We must move fast but follow close on my heels.”
So I sprinted into the dell, taking the same route that I had taken all those years earlier when I fought Kernolde. But this time, no dead hands reached up to clutch my ankles. Last time I had called out a challenge and drawn the witches toward me; this time we had the element of surprise, and the dead would be scattered among the trees. Only the two very strongest and fastest might be able to intercept us. And we were lucky, as the third had already left the dell to hunt. She might roam for miles and spend several nights away before returning. Or she could reappear at any moment.
I still had the exact location of each pit clear in my mind, and soon I was leaping over the first one. I never even glanced back to see if Thorne was safe. The girl was as sure-footed as I was, and her reactions were just as quick.
Soon I sprang over a second, then a third, but at one point I dodged left to avoid a long, thin pit that was impossible to jump; a tree trunk formed a barrier at its far edge. I remembered the way in which Kernolde had tricked and almost defeated me—by digging an extra pit that was unknown to me and filling it with sharp stakes to spear me. A sudden thought struck me.
What if she had dug other pits? What if there were ones that I was unaware of?
I calmed myself, picking up my pace through the dell. Such pits might or might not exist. But as long as I took the same route as last time, we would surely come to no harm.
Soon Kernolde’s tree came into view. It was an ancient oak, the tree within which she had stored her magic. Despite the action of the elements during the intervening years, some of the ropes still hung down from the branches. From those she had once hung her defeated enemies.
I motioned to Thorne, and we came to a halt. I pointed to the pit with my forefinger. It was still partially covered with branches and bracken, onto which many autumns had layered a bed of moldering brown leaves. But at the edge I saw the large hole through which I had fallen, to be impaled below. We walked around the pit and turned, leaning our backs against the huge tree trunk as once Kernolde had done. It was strange to return to this place after all these years. My life had circled me back to the same spot, and I somehow sensed that I would soon face a similar crisis.
There was a rustling to my right. Something was approaching. No doubt it was one of the weaker dead witches—no real threat. After a few moments there were other, louder sounds: the breaking of twigs underfoot, the heavy, confident steps of someone who was not afraid to betray their presence.
A dead wit
ch came into view. She was tall, but even if I had known her in life she would have been a stranger to me now. In place of her right eye was a black empty socket, and the flesh on that side of her face was missing, revealing the skull and cheekbone. The remaining eye, however, glared at me with hatred. There was something very unusual about this dead witch too. Into the leather belt that held up her blood-splattered skirt was tucked a long blade with a curved handle shaped like a ram’s horn, and she carried a long, thin spear.
Dead witches don’t usually arm themselves in this way. Their extreme strength, claws, and teeth are sufficient weapons.
Suddenly I knew her, and everything was instantly clear. This was Needle, one of my predecessors, the witch assassin who had been defeated by Kernolde. Such a clan sister could have been an ally, but the hostile stare of her remaining eye said otherwise. It was filled with madness.
“You have crossed a line!” Needle hissed. “I rule here. This is the place of the dead, not the living. Do you come to challenge me, Grimalkin?”
“Why should the living challenge the dead?” I demanded. “Your time is over. Kernolde defeated you, and I defeated her. One day my time will also be over, and I will take my place here alongside you. We should be allies. There is a dangerous foe approaching.”
“Kernolde used trickery. She used the dead in her cause. Had she fought fairly, I would have defeated her, and in time you too would have died at my hands. So let us put that to the test now. Let us fight—just the two of us!”
“First help me to defeat our common enemy,” I said. “What do you say?”
“Who is this enemy?”
“They are supporters of the Fiend. They want what I carry within this bag.”
I untied the sack, lifted out the head of the Fiend, and showed it to Needle.
She smiled grotesquely, and her white skull bone gleamed in a shaft of moonlight. “I have no love for the Fiend,” she said. “But neither do I care for you! They call you the greatest of the Malkin assassins. It is a lie!”
I returned the Fiend’s head to the sack and was just preparing to tie it shut when madness flickered in Needle’s remaining eye and she ran at me, the spear pointing toward my heart.
I dropped the sack and the head and prepared to defend myself. The most powerful of the dead witches were fast and very strong, much stronger than the living could hope to be. They could tear off my limbs with their bare hands. But this was worse: Needle was a trained witch assassin with a fearsome reputation. She would not be easy to overcome.
Thorne drew a blade and started to move toward my side, but I waved her back—my pride bade me deal with this dead assassin alone. At the last moment, I twisted my body aside, and the point of the spear missed me by inches. My blade was in my hand, but I did not use it. Once I had cut the head from a dead witch in this very dell. To stop Needle, I would have to do something similar—maybe even cut her into pieces. I decided to try to reason with her one more time. I still hoped that she might become our ally.
“Help me to defeat our enemies, and then we will fight,” I offered.
“We fight now!” she cried. “I will kill you, then cut out your heart, sending you straight into the dark! Your thumb bones too I will take. You will be without honor, obliterated from the history of Malkin assassins. You will be nothing!”
She ran at me, wielding the spear. She was beyond reason, having nursed her grievance all through the long years she had spent with the dead. I had my back to the pit and knew exactly what to do. Once again I avoided the spear, and this time delivered a blow with my fist to the back of her head. She fell into the pit without uttering a single cry. But once impaled upon Kernolde’s spikes, she began to wail like a banshee.
“I was told that a dead witch doesn’t feel pain,” Thorne said, looking down to where Needle was transfixed by the long, thin spikes. Each was over six feet long and very thin. Four had pierced her body, and she had slid down them, right to the bottom of the pit. One had taken her in the left shoulder, another through the throat. One had speared her chest, the fourth her abdomen.
I noted the broken spike that I had snapped off to free myself and remembered my own pain.
“What you’ve heard is incorrect,” I told Thorne. “She is in pain, all right, but she is mainly screaming with frustration at failing to kill me. She knows that she lost and, what is worse, that I defeated her very easily. Her body may still be strong, but her mind is rotting and she’s fallen into madness. I overestimated her—she is a shadow of her former self.”
I almost pitied her, for she had fallen far from the heights she had once scaled as an assassin. I could only hope that I would never be reduced to such a state.
Now other sounds could be heard in the short pauses between the screams—rustles in the undergrowth. The other dead witches were approaching us, drawn by Needle’s anguish.
But then I heard something else. Thorne and I sniffed together, but this time it was not witch magic—an attempt to discover a threat or gauge the strength of an enemy. It was something that any human would have recognized instantly; something that would fill a forester with fear.
I could smell smoke, burning wood, and I suddenly knew what our enemies had done.
“They’ve set fire to the dell!” Thorne cried.
I hoisted the sack up onto my shoulder. As I did so, a strong wind sprang up from the west, howling through the trees. They had conjured a gale and fire using dark magic, and the damp foliage would prove no impediment. Now the flames would sweep through the dell, consuming everything in their path.
Our enemies would not be forced to venture into the dell to find us, fighting any dead witches they encountered. They would be waiting in the clearing east of the dell, waiting for us to be driven out by the firestorm.
CHAPTER XX
GRIMALKIN DOES NOT CRY
I anticipate a violent death
but will take many of my enemies with me!
WHAT alternative did we have but to run east? Already, even above the howling of the wind, I could hear the crackle of burning wood, and dark smoke gathered overhead, blocking out the light of the moon.
“We will advance just ahead of the flames, then leave the dell and cut down those in our path,” I told Thorne.
The words were easy to say, but to stay just ahead of the conflagration was far from easy. For one thing, the smoke began to make our eyes water, forcing us into fits of coughing. Second, the fire was advancing very rapidly, leaping from tree to tree and from branch to branch with a crackling roar; it threatened to overtake us at any moment, and our slow jog soon became a fast sprint.
There were animals fleeing with us, a couple of hares and dozens of squealing rats, some of them with singed fur, some burning as they ran. I thought of poor Agnes. If the fire took her, at least her agony would be brief and that miserable existence in the dell as a weak dead witch would be over. But I knew that some inhabitants of the dell would survive by using their sharp talons to burrow into the leafy loam and down into the soft, wet soil beneath. They had the means and the expertise gained by long years of survival here. It was not something that we could hope to do; we didn’t have time.
The trees were thinning, but we could see little through the smoke. Suddenly I sensed something approaching us from behind and whirled to meet the new threat. It was a dead witch—the other strong one, clothes and hair aflame as she ran past, oblivious to us. She was screaming as she ran. The flames were consuming her and she realized that her time in the dell was over. Soon her soul would fall into the dark.
Where was the kretch? I wondered. No doubt it would be waiting somewhere ahead. As we left the trees, a witch attacked us from the left; this time a live one, from the vanguard of our enemies. Thorne cut her down without faltering, and we accelerated away from the danger.
Even above the whine of wind and roar of the fire, I heard the eerie wail of the kretch somewhere behind us. Then it began to bay for our blood, a powerful, rhythmic cry, as if a score of
howling wolfhounds were on our trail.
“You are mine!” it called out, its voice booming through the night. “You cannot escape! I will drink your blood and tear your flesh into strips! I will eat your hearts and gnaw the marrow from your shattered bones!”
We were curving away south now; our path would take us east of Crow Wood. I thought of the lamia, still in the tower. If only she’d had time to shape-shift to her winged form, she might have seen us and flown to our aid. But it was too soon for that. There was no hope of help from that source.
Then, as I ran, the warning lights once again flickered in the corners of my eyes. Would I have time enough to lead Thorne to safety? But too soon the weakness was upon me again; I felt a fluttering in my chest and my breathing became shallow and ragged. I began to slow, and Thorne looked back at me in concern. I halted, hands on hips, aware of the irregular beating of my heart and the trembling in my legs. Now my whole body was shaking.
“No! No! Not now!” I shouted, forcing my body onward, drawing upon my last reserves and every final shred of willpower. But it was useless. I managed to take only a dozen faltering steps before coming to a halt. Thorne paused and came back to stand by my side.
“You go on!” I cried. “You can outrun them; I can’t. It’s the damage done by the poison.”
Thorne shook her head. “I won’t go without you!”
I lifted the sack off my shoulder and held it out to her. “This is what matters. Take it and run. Keep it out of their hands at all costs.”
“I can’t leave you to die.”
“You can and must,” I said, pushing the sack into her hands. “Now go!”
I was resigned to dying here. I could do no more. I was spent.