The witch assassin had cut an escape route through those who stood in our way, and soon we were running down the hill, our enemies left somewhere behind us in the mist.
We encountered no more dark entities, and somehow we managed to cross the ford. But I knew that we were no longer safe on this side of the river. The pact was over.
The streets were empty and utterly silent as we climbed the slope of the western moors. Had the inhabitants locked and barred their doors even though it was still daylight? Or had they fled westwards?
‘Put me down,’ the Spook cried feebly. ‘I don’t want to be a burden. Let me walk.’
Grimalkin didn’t bother to reply; simply increased her pace. As we left the houses behind and followed the track up onto the moor, the fog began to thin and soon we emerged into bright sunshine. I glanced back, but the town and the river were still shrouded from our view. There was no sign of Alice and Judd. I was just starting to worry when they appeared in the far distance, walking alongside a cart.
When they drew closer, I saw Benson’s eyes widen with fear at the sight of Grimalkin. However, he had been paid well, and once the Spook had been carefully lifted up onto the cart, he urged his horses off at full tilt. Quickly Alice handed the leather sack to Grimalkin who hoisted it onto her shoulder. Then we ran after the cart.
We were retreating now, but it was only temporary. It was our duty to return to Todmorden to deal with the threat.
For the first half-hour Grimalkin, Alice, Judd and I sprinted beside the cart, alert for danger, but then Benson turned towards us.
‘It’ll kill the horses to keep up this pace!’ he shouted, shaking his head.
The beasts were sweating, and at a nod from Grimalkin he flicked the reins and slowed them to a trot. After dark we rested for a few hours, taking it in turn to keep watch. Soon we were moving again. The anticipated attack never came, and as the hours passed, Chipenden drew steadily closer.
Normally this would have quelled my anxiety, but the combined power of the Romanian entities could reach us even there. Nowhere was safe.
THE FIRST NIGHT back in Chipenden passed without incident, but we felt certain that our enemies would attack soon, so we remained vigilant. My master was having a difficult time of it – about an hour before dawn I heard him cry out in anguish.
As yet there were no beds, so we’d made the Spook as comfort able as possible on the kitchen floor. He was wrapped in blankets, lying on a pallet of straw to insulate him from the chill of the flags. I rushed over to find him groaning in his sleep. No doubt he was having a nightmare, reliving the horrors of his incarceration and the draining of his blood. I considered waking him, but after a few moments he quietened down and his breathing became steadier.
I found it difficult to get back to sleep. Soon after first light I went outside to stretch my legs and inspect the work on the house. The new roof was now up and the doors and windows had been replaced so at least we were sheltered from the elements.
Inside, much remained to be done. Upstairs, the bedrooms could not be used because the floorboards had either been burned away entirely or were clearly unsafe. This was the carpenter’s next job. However, he had already reconstructed the library floor, as that was high on my master’s list of priorities.
Later, when I went to check on the Spook again before breakfast, he was sitting with his back against the wall, facing towards the fireplace. On one side of him was half a bowl of chicken soup. On the other, close at hand, was his Bestiary.
Logs were burning in the grate and, although sparsely furnished, the kitchen was cheerful and warm; but my master’s face looked sad and anxious, and despite the fire, he was shivering.
‘Are you feeling any better?’ I asked.
‘Better than I was, lad,’ he told me, his voice weak and tremulous. ‘But I’ve not much appetite and I hardly managed a wink of shut-eye last night . . . When I did doze off, it was straight into the same terrible nightmare. I wonder if I’ll ever get a good night’s sleep again.’
‘At least you’re safe now,’ I told him. ‘I really thought you were dead.’
It was the first time we’d had a chance to talk properly since I left him in the library at Mistress Fresque’s house, and I quickly related all that had happened – including my conversation with what I thought was his head.
‘I thought the same, lad – that it had really happened. I felt terrible pain as they cut off my head, and then I was confined in that box. I was choking, fighting for breath. It was just about the worst experience I can remember in all my long years of fighting the dark.
‘Then I was in the pit, and I realized I still had my head on my shoulders. I should have been relieved, but having my blood taken was almost as bad. After the initial bite there wasn’t much pain, but it was terrible to be in the grip of that hideous creature and feel so utterly powerless and weak – to feel the labouring of my heart as the life was drained from my body.’
The Spook closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I thought that by binding the Fiend we’d seriously weakened the dark, but it seems resilient. It’s as strong as ever – maybe more so. On the Isle of Mona we put an end to Bony Lizzie, then, in Ireland, stopped the goat mages raising Pan, as well as cutting off the Fiend’s head. But there’s always something else to take the place of those we defeat. And now it’s the Romanian entities threatening the County.
‘Still, it seems to me that you’ve acquitted yourself well, lad. I’m proud of you. You’ve proved yourself to be the best apprentice I’ve ever had – though I’d better not let Judd Brinscall hear me saying that,’ he said with a smile.
By now I was smiling from ear to ear: it was a rare thing to receive praise from my master.
In response to my delight, he frowned. ‘Don’t let my words go to your head, lad – you still have a long way to go. Now listen carefully – we can do a few things to increase our chances of survival!’
I wiped the grin off my face and nodded.
‘An attack by daemons and witches will almost certainly come at night – we have the daylight hours before the first threat appears. Go down into the village, lad, and get the blacksmith to make up three staffs with retractable silver-alloy blades – one for you, one for me and one for Judd. Tell him it’s urgent and you’ll collect them before nightfall. If I’m going to die, I want to go down fighting! Then you can pay a visit to the grocer, the baker and the butcher and bring back our usual food order.
‘And there’s one other thing you can do. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth attempting. Remember the boggart? Track it down, and then try to persuade it to come back. Make a new pact with it.’
When still a young man, my master had made a bargain with the boggart that Judd and I had talked about on our journey to Todmorden; the pact had endured only so long as the house had a roof. So the fire had freed it.
‘How will I find it?’ I asked.
‘With difficulty, lad, but it won’t have gone far. You need to check down the ley-lines. My hunch tells me that it will have taken the one that runs north to south. No one has asked me to deal with a boggart, so my guess is that it’s holed up in some abandoned building south of here – or maybe somewhere people tolerate it. Who knows, lad – it could be making breakfast for somebody else by now! Follow the line and find out. It might even have gone back to the old wood-mill where I first encountered it. Boggarts are creatures of habit and often return to where they were once comfortable.’
Leys were invisible lines of power along which boggarts moved from one place to another. The Spook could well be right. He said ‘guess’, but his instincts were often correct.
‘Do you think you can follow the line without a map?’ he asked me. ‘Or would you like me to sketch it out for you?’
The Spook’s maps had been destroyed in the fire, but I’d walked that ley with my master twice before. ‘I can remember the route,’ I told him.
‘Did you ever read the account in m
y Bestiary about how I made the pact with the boggart?’
‘I skimmed it once but didn’t read it carefully,’ I admitted.
‘You do too much skimming and not enough careful reading, lad. It’s one of your faults! Well, read it now. It might help,’ he said, handing the book to me.
I quickly turned to the section on boggarts. There are four stages in dealing with a boggart: negotiation, intimidation, binding and slaying, and the first of these had eventually proved successful with this boggart. After a few early difficulties, with my master receiving a tremendous blow to the head and scratches to his cheek, he had finally come to an agreement with it. I read the terms of the contract very carefully:
The following night I entered the kitchen with some trepidation and spoke to the invisible boggart.
‘Your reward shall be my garden!’ I called out. ‘In addition to cooking, washing, cleaning and tidying you will also guard the house and garden, keeping at bay all threats and dangers.’
The boggart growled at that, angered that I’d demanded more work from it by extending its duties to the garden. Quickly I continued explaining what its reward would be.
‘But in return for that, the garden shall also be your domain. With the exception of things bound within pits or chains, or my future apprentices, the blood of any creature found there after dark is yours to claim. But if the intruder is human you must first give three warning howls. This is a pact between us which will endure as long as this house has a roof!’
‘If I can find the boggart, do you think it’s likely to accept the same contract?’ I asked.
The Spook scratched at his beard. ‘With boggarts, the more you give ’em, the more they expect, so you need to think of something extra. Negotiating is always the first sensible step when dealing with a boggart. But if we could get it to guard the house and garden again, it could certainly take care of some of the strigoii and strigoica, should they come here. Unlike some of the daemons I’ve encountered, once they’ve entered a human body, they are bound there, and that makes them more vulnerable.’
‘What about the witches?’ I wondered.
‘If the witches approach in the form of orbs, that could prove more difficult – and then of course there’s Siscoi: the boggart wouldn’t stand much of a chance against one of the Old Gods.’
Three years earlier the boggart had defended the garden against an evil entity called the Bane. It had been wounded in the process, but had prevailed. At the time, the Bane had been steadily growing in power, but its strength wouldn’t have matched that of the Old Gods.
‘It’s still worth it,’ my master went on. ‘We need all the help we can get.’
‘I’ll go down into the village and get the smith started on our new staffs straight after breakfast,’ I told him. ‘Then I’ll go hunting for the boggart.’
The Spook shook his head. ‘Sorry, lad, but you’ll soon be facing the dark. Take a bit of County cheese with you – that’ll have to suffice for now.’
My stomach was already rumbling with hunger and I groaned silently.
‘You know, lad, I had a lot of time to think while I was trapped in that pit praying for death to release me. Although in the past I’ve blamed you for getting close to the dark, I’ve been no better. I’ve always been suspicious of young Alice and warned you against her, but that was because I’d failed in my own duty by associating with Meg . . . ’
My master fell silent. Meg was a lamia witch – the love of his life. He’d lived with her for many years but now she’d returned to Greece.
‘I closed my mind to much of that,’ he continued, ‘but I have to admit that my dealings with the dark began earlier than that. The pact I made with the boggart was the start. It was my first ally from the other side, the first step that eventually led to my alliance with Grimalkin.’
I was confused. What was he saying? ‘Then you don’t want me to search for the boggart after all? You’ve changed your mind?’
‘Nay, lad, it’s vital that you find it and make another pact. Using the dark is one way to beat the dark – so that’s what we must do. I’m not happy about it, that’s all. The old standards I tried to live my life by – we’ve had to let them go in order to survive. It’s a sad, bad business. Anyway, off you go – but whatever happens make sure that you’re back long before dark.’
Suddenly his expression became serious. ‘I’ve forgiven Judd for what he did, and I hope that you can do the same, lad. Nobody is perfect and he went through a lot. I’ve been in one of those strigoi pits, so I should know – not to mention the threats to his family . . . So, let bygones be bygones, eh?’
I nodded. I knew that what had happened belonged to the past. I was doing my best to forgive Judd, though I was finding it hard.
‘After breakfast Judd is setting off for the barracks at Burnley to tell the military about the threat to Todmorden,’ the Spook continued. ‘With a bit of luck they might listen to what he has to say and send a force up there to investigate. We have to do something while we are gathering our strength. It might at least make our enemies lie low for a while and save a few lives.’
Grimalkin, Judd and Alice were in the garden, finishing off bacon and eggs that they’d cooked over a fire. I looked at it longingly. The dogs came bounding across, pleased to see me, and after I’d patted them, I sat down by the fire and told them what I’d been asked to do.
‘It’s worth a try,’ Judd said. ‘I miss that boggart – it’s one of my strongest memories of my apprenticeship here at Chipenden. It belongs here – it certainly will make our defences stronger.’
‘I’ll come with you, Tom,’ Alice offered.
‘Yes, the two of you will be safer together,’ said Grimalkin, rising to her feet and lifting the sack up onto her shoulder. ‘Later I’ll search the area in case there is any sign of an impending attack. They could have sent out an advance party to see where we are based.’
‘That means I’d best get back from Burnley as soon as I can to keep an eye on John Gregory,’ said Judd. ‘I’ll see if one of the local farmers will lend me a horse. But it’s agreed that you’ll all return here at least a couple of hours before the sun goes down? If I don’t make it back on time, can I rely on that?’
We gave him our promise, and I walked down into the village with Alice. I’d have liked to take the dogs with us, but that wasn’t wise – dogs and boggarts don’t mix and their lives would have been in danger.
Usually I was comfortable with Alice even when we just walked and said little. I’d never felt the need to fill the silences. But now I was ill at ease. Time was running out – it was less than five months till the ritual to destroy the Fiend had to take place. The thought of her going into the dark pained me, but even worse was the truth I’d withheld: that the sacred object she sought there – the third hero sword, the dagger called Dolorous – was intended to take her life.
Alice was giving me some strange glances. Had she somehow found out that she had to be sacrificed to destroy the Fiend? I wondered. Who knew what she could now achieve with her magic. I felt relieved when we reached the village.
During the war Chipenden had been visited by an enemy patrol. Houses had been burned and people killed, and the remainder of the villagers had fled. It was good to see that a lot of reconstruction had already taken place and that many houses were occupied once more. I visited the blacksmith and he promised to have the three staffs ready for collection by the afternoon. Then I popped into the grocer’s, baker’s and butcher’s shops in turn, told them that things were getting back to normal up at the Spook’s house, and to please have our usual orders ready by the end of the day.
Once that was accomplished, we turned our attention to the Spook’s next instruction. I had to find the boggart, and somehow persuade it to come and guard the Chipenden house and garden once more.
TRUSTING THE SPOOK’S intuition that we would find the boggart somewhere along the ley-line he’d indicated, Alice and I started east of Chipenden and he
aded directly south of the Spook’s house.
It was a sunny spring morning, and the walk was pleasant, though I still felt a degree of discomfort in Alice’s company. We crossed the small meandering river twice, splashing across the fords, and approached the first likely location of the boggart: an old barn which still had a roof, even though it was sagging ominously.
‘Ain’t been used for some time, that,’ said Alice. ‘Looks promising to me. It’s a likely enough place for a boggart to have made its home.’
‘Then let’s take a closer look,’ I suggested.
We strolled around the building and then went inside. There were birds nesting under the eaves, but apart from their chirping all was silent. I had no sense that something from the dark was nearby.
We continued south and eventually came to a small cottage, which I remembered from my last walk down the ley. It had been occupied by a farm labourer, his wife and child, but since then the war had intervened. The doors and windows had gone and the cottage was a shell, the roof likely to collapse inwards the next time a storm blew in from the west.
I led the way inside, glancing up nervously at the blackened beams. Again I had no intimation that the boggart had made its home here – but I found something else. There was a faint shimmer in the corner, and the ghost of a child appeared, a girl of no more than five. She was wearing a white dress, but it was splattered with blood. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she held out her arms and called piteously for her mam and dad.
It could be that her parents had died in the fire or been murdered by the soldiers. But she had come back to the place where she’d been happy, searching for the mam and dad who had cherished and protected her until that terrible day when war had come to this little cottage.
‘Oh! Help her, Tom. Help her – please!’ Alice cried, gripping my hand tightly, tears running down her own cheeks. Alice might be using her witch powers more and more, but her heart was certainly in the right place. It seemed to me at that moment that she was a long, long way from becoming a malevolent witch.