Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1: Like a Puppet
Chapter 2: Lukrasta
Chapter 3: Farmer Boy
Chapter 4: A Council of War
Chapter 5: The Haunted Attics
Chapter 6: A Little Detour
Chapter 7: The God-Maker
Chapter 8: The Dead Prisoners
Chapter 9: An Anvil of Pain
Chapter 10: Beaten and Controlled
Chapter 11: Endless Nightmares
Chapter 12: Shape-Shifting
Chapter 13: Blood and Spittle
Chapter 14: Prisoner of the Kobalos
Chapter 15: The Shameful Death
Chapter 16: Pause for Thought
Chapter 17: The Earth Witch
Chapter 18: Grimalkin’s Plans
Chapter 19: The Final Winter
Chapter 20: The Space Between Worlds
Chapter 21: A Globule of Acid
Chapter 22: Poison
Chapter 23: The Earth Screamed
Chapter 24: White String
Chapter 25: Wolf Meat
Chapter 26: Not Safe Anywhere
Chapter 27: The Body in the Sack
Chapter 28: The Promise
Chapter 29: The Butcher God
Chapter 30: The Night Attack
Chapter 31: Mirrors
Chapter 32: The Winter House
Chapter 33: The Round Loaf
Chapter 34: Toppling Like a Tree
Chapter 35: Boy of Tears
Glossary of the Kobalos World
About the Author
Also by Joseph Delaney
Sneak Preview
Copyright
About the Book
Terrifying warriors of the dark have formed an army,
the like of which has never been seen before.
They will spill human blood – enough to make the
waters that divide our lands from theirs run red.
Thomas Ward, the County Spook, fought the dark with his own apprentice. He travelled far from home to lead an uprising against a legion of beasts intent on locking the whole earth in a never-ending winter.
But Tom now lies cold in his grave, and those who remain are in despair.
Who can now take up the battle – before the dark army brings the fight back to the County, and the world is changed for ever?
The clash with the forces of darkness continues in this terrifying new tale from the bestselling author of The Spook’s Apprentice.
For Marie
We face a dark army, but its whole is greater than just the Kobalos military might, and far larger than the terrible battle-entities that they have created.
It includes the gods who support them – deities such as Golgoth, the Lord of Winter, who will blast the green from the Earth and create a road of ice along which their warriors may glide to victory.
Grimalkin
ABOUT AN HOUR after dark, Jenny began to climb the spiral steps that led to the tallest of the high eastern turrets. She was slightly breathless, but it was not just because of the exertion of the steep climb.
She was nervous. Her palms were sweating and she could feel a weakness in her knees. The attic she was heading for was haunted.
She was only an apprentice and it would be many years before she’d become a spook. Was she taking on too much? she wondered.
It was cold, and her breath was steaming from her nostrils. Step after step she forced herself upwards.
Jenny was carrying a lantern; one pocket was filled with salt and the other with iron; additionally she had tied the silver chain around her waist and was also gripping a rowan staff. She was ready for any threat from the dark.
The way to deal with ghosts was to talk to them – to try and persuade them to go to the light – but Jenny wasn’t taking any chances. In this cold northern land, so far from the County, who knew what she might encounter? Ghosts might be very different here. She felt better with her pockets full and a weapon in her hand.
She reached the stout wooden attic door and tried one of the eight big keys on the heavy bunch. She was lucky: although the lock was stiff, the second key turned.
The door creaked open on rusty hinges, the bottom juddering towards her over the flags as she dragged it open. It had swollen with the damp and probably hadn’t been opened for many years.
Jenny took a deep breath to steady her nerves and stepped into the room. She was a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter with the gift of sensitivity to the dark; instantly she sensed that something threatening was nearby. She raised the lantern high and examined her surroundings: a small room, the wooden panelling stained with patches of fungus, and the table and two chairs were covered in a thick layer of dust. Another door was directly ahead of her, no doubt leading to the main chamber.
She shivered. It was cold enough to make her glad of her sheepskin jacket. But the worst thing was the smell. This was just about one of the stinkiest places she’d ever been in. Back in the County, she’d once walked out onto the Morecambe Bay sands to see what a crowd of people were staring at. There’d been a shoal of huge fish washed up on the beach. They’d been dead for some time and they stank. What she smelled now was similar, but there was some kind of living animal smell mixed in. It was a bit like walking into a stable of sweating horses and sodden sawdust. Then there was a third element to the mix – a hint of burning flesh and a taste of sulphur on her tongue.
By the yellow light of the lantern she saw a big spider high on the wall above the inner door. As she approached, the creature scuttled off towards a huge web in the corner.
There was no lock – just a metal handle. She turned it and tried to open the door by pushing it away from her. There was resistance so she reversed direction, pulling it smoothly outwards.
Her sense of a threat from the dark was growing.
The lantern illuminated what had once been someone’s opulent living quarters, now ruined by damp and neglect. Three huge fireplaces gaped like monstrous mouths, their rusty metal grates filled with ashes. Water dripped from the ceiling onto a rusty chandelier. There were the remnants of fine carpets on the floor; now they were damp, dirty and mildewed.
Then something unexpected caught her attention: four couches at the centre of the room formed a square, facing inwards towards something very unusual – a dark circular hole about ten feet in diameter. It was ringed with stones – someone had left a wine glass precariously balanced there. It looked as if the slightest disturbance would send it plummeting down into the darkness. The stones themselves glistened with water.
Jenny approached the ring of stones and gazed down into the dark hole, holding the lantern over it. It looked like a well. Was there water at the bottom?
Then Jenny realized that there was something impossible about what she was seeing: how could it be a well?
She was standing in an attic right at the top of a turret. There were rooms below. Directly beneath them in the palace was a kitchen and then, on the lowest level, the second largest throne room where Prince Stanislaw, the ruler of this land, received petitions, held meetings and dispensed justice.
She had been given a tour of this part of the castle a day or so earlier. If this dark shaft ran through the turret rooms and then down into the ground, then there would have had to be some sort of circular stone structure, like a chimney, in each of the large rooms near the ground. Surely she would have noticed such a thing?
Except for the sound of her muffled footsteps across the damp carpet and the water dripping onto the chandelier, the room was quiet. But Jenny co
uld hear something new: a trickling, as if water was being poured into some small vessel.
She stared at the wine glass. It was slowly filling with red wine. A thin stream was falling into the glass but there was no visible source for the liquid. Was it being poured by an invisible hand?
A second later an unmistakable metallic odour told her that she was wrong about the liquid. It wasn’t wine. It was blood.
Jenny watched in fearful fascination as the glass slowly filled. The blood reached the brim and then spilled over onto the stone. The droplets began to steam, and the sudden sharp stench made her heave. As she watched, the blood in the glass began to bubble.
Then the vessel wobbled and fell into the dark shaft.
Jenny counted to ten but there was no splash, no sound at all. The shaft appeared to be bottomless.
The room had been dank and cold, but now it seemed to be growing warmer. Steam began to rise from the circle of wet stones.
Her sense of danger increased. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and her fingertips were tingling. These reactions told her that this attic contained something far worse than a poor soul needing to be coaxed towards the light. She had hoped to demonstrate her bravery and prove her competence to become a spook. She had to learn to cope alone.
Terror gripped her. She sensed that there was something really bad here; something big and dangerous; something that wanted to kill her.
Jenny stepped away from the circle of stones, away from the couches, pressing her back against the wall.
From the depths below, something enormous took a breath. It was so vast that the air it sucked in rushed past Jenny with the force of a gale, slamming the inner door shut with a bang. The blast made her stagger forward onto her knees before it swirled away down the dark shaft towards an unseen mouth and cavernous lungs.
She dropped the lantern and was plunged into total darkness.
Jenny cried out in terror as a monstrous glowing shape bulged up out of the vast impossible space and hovered in the air above it. Six glowing ruby-red eyes stared towards her; eyes set deep within a bulbous head.
When it exhaled, the breath of this creature – whatever it was – felt hot and putrid; there was a stench of decay, of dead things that still slithered or crawled in a subterranean darkness.
Then tentacles were coiling and writhing, reaching out towards her, intending to twine about her and drag her back down into that dark impossible hole.
She would never live to become a spook now.
She would die here alone in the darkness.
JENNY CALDER
YESTERDAY WAS THE worst day of my life.
It was the day that Thomas Ward, the Chipenden Spook, my master, died.
Tom should have been back in the County fighting the dark, dealing with ghosts, ghasts, witches and boggarts. We should have been visiting places such as Priestown, Caster, Poulton, Burnley and Blackburn. I should have spent time in the Chipenden library and garden being trained as a spook’s apprentice. I should have been practising digging boggart pits and improving my skills with a silver chain.
Instead we followed the witch assassin, Grimalkin, on a long doomed journey north towards the lands of the Kobalos. They’re barbaric non-human warriors with a thick hide of fur and faces like wolves. They plan to make war on the human race; they intend to kill all the men and boys and enslave the females.
One of their warriors, a shaiksa assassin with deadly fighting skills, had been visiting the river, the divide between the territories of men and Kobalos. He’d been issuing challenges, then fighting human opponents in single combat, killing his adversaries with ease. But the holy men of this land, the magowie, had been visited by a winged figure – a figure who had the appearance of an angel and who had made a prophecy:
One day soon a human will come who will defeat the Kobalos warrior. After his victory he will lead the combined armies of the principalities to victory!
Hearing of this prophecy, Grimalkin had formulated a plan. It was a plan that cost Tom his life.
Grimalkin’s scheme was for Tom Ward to fight and defeat the warrior and then lead an army into Kobalos lands so that she could learn of their magical and military abilities.
Tom had indeed defeated the warrior, but the Kobalos’s dying act had been to pierce Tom’s body with his sabre.
So Tom Ward had died too.
That was yesterday.
Today we are going to bury him.
Tom’s coffin rested on the grass in the open. Prince Stanislaw, who ruled Polyznia, the largest of the principalities bordering Kobalos territory, stood beside it, flanked by two of his guards. He nodded towards Grimalkin and me, and then beckoned four of his men forward. They hefted the coffin up onto their shoulders.
He and this armed escort were with us to do honour to Tom. I wished they didn’t have to be here; I wanted to take Tom back to the County where his old master was buried and his family still lived on their farm.
I glanced sideways at the prince – a big man with short grey hair, a large nose and close-set eyes. He was in his fifties, I guessed, and hadn’t an ounce of fat on his body. His intelligent eyes looked sad now.
He and his warriors had been impressed by Tom’s fighting skill. Despite suffering a mortal wound, he had slain the Kobalos warrior, something that the prince’s own champions had been unable to do.
As we trudged up towards the place where Tom was to be buried, thunder crashed overhead, and soon torrential rain had soaked us to the skin. Grimalkin gripped my shoulder. I suppose she meant to be comforting – in so far as someone as wild and cruel as a witch assassin can be. But Tom’s death had been brought about by her machinations and anger began to build within me. Her grip was firm to the point of hurting, but I shrugged her off and took a step nearer to the open grave.
I glanced at the headstone and began to read what had been carved upon it:
HERE LIETH PRINCE THOMAS OF CASTER,
A BRAVE WARRIOR
WHO FELL IN COMBAT
BUT TRIUMPHED WHERE OTHERS FAILED
The lie we had created – that Tom was a prince – had gone too far; and now here it was written upon his gravestone. It made my stomach turn. Tom was a young spook who had fought the dark, and this should have been acknowledged. This shouldn’t have happened, I thought bitterly. He deserved the truth.
But this again had been Grimalkin’s doing. Tom had needed to pose as a prince because the armies of the principalities would not follow a commoner.
I watched as a hooded magowie, one of their priests, prayed for Tom, rain dripping from the end of his nose. The smell of wet soil was very strong. Soon it would cover Tom’s remains.
Then the prayers were over and the gravediggers began to shovel wet earth down upon the coffin. I glanced back at Grimalkin and saw that she was grinding her teeth. She seemed more angry than sad; but I was churning with mixed emotions too.
Suddenly the men stopped working and looked up. There was movement and light in the air high above us. I gasped as I spotted a winged figure hovering far above the grave; it glowed with a silver light, its fluttering wings huge.
It was the same angel-like being that had hovered over the hill while the three magowie made their prophecy, foretelling the coming of a champion to defeat the Shaiksa assassin and lead humans across the river to victory.
Suddenly it folded its white wings and dropped towards us like a stone, coming to a stop less than thirty feet above our heads. Now I could make out a beautiful face that shone with pale light. Everyone was gazing upwards now, gasping in astonishment.
There was a noise from the grave but, fascinated by the winged figure, I continued to look up. It was only when the sound came again that I glanced down.
At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I wasn’t the only person staring down into the grave. I saw that the casket was slightly tilted, and the sodden earth that covered it was sliding away to reveal the wet wooden lid.
G
rimalkin hissed in anger and stared up at the winged being. I could understand her annoyance at the interference. Couldn’t Tom even be left to be buried in peace? But then I saw that the coffin was moving. What could be causing that?
I hardly dared to hope . . . Could it be that Tom was alive . . .?
With a jerk, the coffin rose up into the air above the grave and began to spin, spraying mud and droplets of water in all directions. The corner caught one of the gravediggers and knocked him backwards into the waiting mound of earth.
I stared open-mouthed as the coffin slowly rose upwards. Grimalkin rushed forward, stretching out her arms as if to grab it. But, spinning faster and faster, it eluded her grasp and whirled towards the winged figure. I heard another hiss of anger from Grimalkin – but it was lost in an ear-splitting boom of thunder that set my teeth on edge.
Suddenly the heavens were split with intense light – not the sheet lightning we had experienced so far: this was a jagged fork of blue lightning that seemed to come from the winged figure. It struck Tom’s coffin with a crack that hurt my ears.
It had to be something supernatural – a wielding of dark magic. Judging by her reactions, it certainly wasn’t Grimalkin’s doing. But who was responsible?
The coffin immediately disintegrated, splinters of wood falling towards us. I quickly retreated, shielding my head with my arms, bumping into people in my haste to get clear.
Some of the pieces splashed into the water at the bottom of the empty grave; others fell around me.
When I looked up again, Tom’s corpse was spinning above us, his arms and legs flopping and jerking, his body spiralling down towards the grave again. I stared at him in amazement. His eyes were closed in death; he looked like a puppet dangling from invisible controlling strings. I could hardly bear to watch: that such an indignity should be inflicted upon him!
Suddenly, far above him, the winged creature vanished like a candle flame snuffed out by a giant thumb and forefinger. Sheet lightning flashed and Tom’s corpse fell twenty feet or more into the mound of soil beside the grave.
For a moment there was absolute silence. I held my breath, stunned by what I had just witnessed, a whole range of emotions churning through me.