I was waiting for my chance too. I couldn’t use magic here, but I had no intention of giving up without a fight.
‘DON’T KEEP HIM waiting for an answer!’ Lizzie screeched into my ear. ‘You wouldn’t believe what he’s capable of!’
‘I will give you one more opportunity to answer,’ said the mouth, opening and closing, dripping blood as the flies droned each word. ‘I know your secret fear. Remain silent and it will happen to you now!’
My secret fear! What did Beelzebub mean? I had many fears: that I might not manage to retrieve the dagger; that I would return too late for the ritual to be performed; that something might have happened to Tom; that Grimalkin would fail to keep the head safe and that the Fiend would walk the earth again; that I would lack the courage to keep silent when Tom took my bones; that one day I would be struck by lightning; that—
Suddenly I knew what the daemon meant. A memory flashed into my mind to make me shudder. Once more I saw Lizzie in Jacob Stone’s garden, flies crawling all over her face.
That was what I feared here and now, and Beelzebub knew it! Creepy-crawlies. After spiders, I feared swarms of flies. I couldn’t bear the thought of them crawling over my face.
‘Tell him nothing!’ Thorne cried out.
I glanced across to where she was still held by two brutish thugs. I nodded. She was right. I couldn’t tell them why I had entered the dark.
‘So be it!’ said the mouth, which immediately closed. The features melted back into the simple oval that had given birth to them. Then the swarm of flies soared aloft and zoomed towards me.
I lashed out with my hands, trying to keep them away. But it was hopeless. There was more chance of fending off hailstones with a sewing needle. In seconds, the flies were all over my face and head. They covered my eyes so that I couldn’t see; buzzed into my ears and up my nose. I felt the weight of them bowing my head forward.
My nose was blocked and I couldn’t breathe . . . I panicked. There was only one thing I could do; something I was desperate to avoid.
I needed to open my mouth to draw in a lungful of precious air . . .
But if I did that, the flies would be able to get in.
I reached for my nose and squashed as many as I could, feeling them turn to slime under my desperate fingers. I squeezed my nostrils together and sneezed out the flies. But I had less than a second’s relief before they crawled up my nose again. Strong hands seized mine and pulled my fingers away from my face so that I could not gain even a moment’s further relief.
I hung on as long as I could, my lungs bursting, enduring the horror of those big fat bluebottles crawling all over my face and getting tangled in my hair.
Then at last I had no choice.
I opened my mouth and gulped in air.
And the flies followed.
I tried spitting them out, but there were far too many of them. They were all over my tongue, and I began to retch as they crawled down my throat. Moments later, that too was blocked. I fell to my knees, gagging because of the flies in my throat, and then vomited. That gave me another second of relief; one brief fresh intake of air before they filled my mouth and throat once more.
My wrists were still held tightly, my arms now twisted behind my back. My eyes were covered and I couldn’t breathe; I was in darkness, slowly dying.
Suddenly the weight was gone from my head and I saw the flickering yellow of torchlight. The swarm had lifted off me and was shifting to form a gigantic face again. I spat the last of the flies out of my mouth and looked up at it.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Tusk, still behind me. He was holding my wrists so tightly that the bones were being crushed. Lizzie was now on my right, a gloating smile on her face.
‘Never did like flies, did you, girl?’ she said. ‘They seem to like you, though – can’t get enough of you!’
The huge mouth opened again and words rumbled out: ‘Speak now. Tell me what I want!’
I shook my head and stared up at the swarm defiantly.
‘You are brave and can endure difficult trials,’ said the gigantic mouth. ‘But I sense another weakness within you. Another fear. You would not let harm befall a friend whom you have the power to save! Bring the other girl closer!’
Lizzie stepped aside to allow the two men to drag Thorne forward to my side.
‘This time I will not relent until you tell me what you wish to know,’ said the voice. ‘And if you refuse, she who is your friend will die the second death!’
The face became a dark egg again, and moved up closer to the ceiling, forming an angry swarm, ready to descend upon Thorne.
I was beaten. I would have to tell the daemon what he wanted.
We were prisoners, and our hopes of ever achieving our goal were slim. What little hope I had now rested on Thorne finding an opportunity to set us free by using her remaining weapon – the scissors.
She couldn’t do that if I allowed the flies to smother her. So what would it matter then if they knew I’d come here for the dagger?
I opened my mouth, intending to tell Beelzebub what he wished to know . . .
But in that second, Thorne tore herself free. It happened very quickly. She drew the scissors from their sheath, but instead of using these on her captors, ran straight towards the chair where Beelzebub was seated.
He was a daemon, but he had only been able to manipulate the flies because they were part of him, part of who he was; they were like extra limbs, particles of self that he could direct using his mind. Anywhere else but within this basilica and he would have blasted Thorne with powerful magic, hurling her across the room or incinerating her on the spot. But even his daemonic magic didn’t work here.
Thorne was fast. She took Beelzebub by surprise. At the last moment, his tongue flickering in and out of his mouth, he came to his feet and tried to fend off her attack with his left hand.
That was a mistake. Probably the biggest he’d ever made in the countless aeons he’d spent in the dark.
He had never met a human as brave and fast and deadly as Thorne. She had been trained by Grimalkin. She thought like Grimalkin. She fought like Grimalkin.
And, like Grimalkin, Thorne dared things that some couldn’t even imagine!
The scissors flashed as they caught the light from the nearest of the torches. The blades closed.
And she snipped the thumb from the daemon’s left hand.
Beelzebub screamed and brought up his right hand to protect himself.
She took that thumb too.
She caught each thumb as it fell, holding them in her left hand as the daemon staggered backwards, shrieking like a stuck pig.
At that moment I once more became aware of that faint stink of rotting eggs. Was it the gate? I sniffed quickly three times and, to my astonishment, my eyes were drawn towards the swarm of flies. They were losing the egg-shape; beginning to form something else.
Then Thorne whirled to meet a new threat. It was Tusk, roaring like a bull and lumbering towards her, ready to rip her limb from limb while Lizzie and Mother Malkin stood immobile, mouths open, paralysed with shock.
She was ready for him. I knew exactly what she would do before she struck. I remembered how John Gregory had dealt with Tusk back in the County. He had stabbed him through the forehead with the silver-alloy blade of his spook’s staff. Pierced to the brain, Tusk had fallen down stone-dead.
Now Thorne did the same, but with her scissors. Quickly she stepped within Tusk’s lumbering grasp. As his arms closed to try and crush her, she struck. For a moment the scissors were left sticking out of the centre of Tusk’s forehead. He made no sound, but his grasping hands sank to his side and he fell to his knees, eyes already glassy.
She plucked the scissors free, looked directly at me, and then pointed to the swarm of flies. ‘The gate!’ she shouted.
The swarm was no longer in the shape of an egg; neither had it formed the face that had allowed Beelzebub to speak to us. They had become three large concentric ci
rcles, their colour changing from black to maroon, and they were flying rapidly widdershins, making it look as if those hoops were spinning. Within those circles was something else.
Another domain.
I could see columns and dark arches . . . some sort of building.
‘Go through it, Alice! You first!’ cried Thorne.
For a moment I hesitated. What if I got through and she was left behind?
But I had to find the blade. Everything depended on that. I looked up and saw both Mother Malkin and Lizzie reaching for me with their long sharp nails.
I ran past them and leaped through the gate of flies.
WE WERE SITTING on wooden stools before a cauldron, and Thorne was holding the daemon’s thumbs above the boiling water. She wanted the power that wearing them could bring. It would increase our chances of success and survival.
Thorne had followed me through the gate and, at last, just as she had predicted, we found ourselves in the domain of the Fiend. I remembered it from my last visit. There was no doubt. For one thing there was the pervasive smell – an odour of sulphur; a hint of something being burned. The light was distinctive: it had a strange coppery sheen, as if we were viewing everything through ancient coloured glass.
The only difference was that this time his servants, the lesser daemons who had tormented and tortured me, were absent. In fact, at present the domain appeared to be deserted.
We were in the large stone-flagged kitchen of some vast building that could have been a castle or a place of worship like the one we’d just left. I had never seen it from the outside, though I had previously spent time in its dungeons and had been dragged in manacles through its interminable dank stone corridors. It was all flooding back to me now, the horror of my earlier visit here.
Cauldrons, pots, pans and cooking utensils were everywhere. But there were no chefs, and we saw no food. When Thorne dropped the daemon’s thumbs into the boiling water, they began to cook.
Then I noticed Thorne’s own thumbs . . . She had them back. It was as if she had never been mutilated.
‘How did that happen?’ I asked in astonishment. ‘Surely it must be the result of magic – but I thought that wasn’t possible within the basilica.’
She shrugged and smiled. ‘Maybe it’s the result of some natural law of the dark. I came here minus thumbs because having them cut off was what killed me. But here in the dark I just took the thumbs of Beelzebub, a powerful daemon. So I get them back.’
‘Grimalkin would be proud of you!’ I said. ‘Taking the thumbs of a daemon is something that she probably never did.’
‘She helped take the head of the Fiend, though,’ said Thorne with a smile.
‘How was it that the flies became the gate?’ I wondered, watching the thumbs spinning in the boiling water. ‘I could smell the gate when we faced Beelzebub, but I never guessed it was the flies. I thought they were part of him . . .’
‘They were, but I think he had seized the gate to lure us into his presence. To control it, he had to make it temporarily part of himself. But when I cut off his thumbs, the pain made him lose concentration, and the gate broke free and formed its natural shape, using the flies as a frame.’
‘Did you know that would happen?’
‘I wasn’t certain,’ Thorne replied, ‘but I thought there was a chance. In any case, I just did what Grimalkin taught me – when you face many enemies, hurt the strongest first.’
After a while, the bristly flesh slipped off the white thumb-bones, and they began to dance in the churning water. Thorne got to her feet and leaned over the cauldron, her face intent on what had to be done.
She must pluck the bones out of the scalding water, ignoring the pain. They must be grasped at exactly the same time. Dropping one would cause the magic to be lost.
Thorne moved quickly, her hands a blur, then looked at me, smiling in triumph, one of the daemon’s thumb-bones in each hand.
It took her another half-hour to bore a tiny hole in each bone with a blade adapted for the purpose: it was long, thin, and very hard at the tip.
I was impatient to search for the throne room – Tom’s mam had told him that the blade was hidden under the Fiend’s throne. However, I bit my lip. We needed all the help we could get, and those daemon bones would strengthen Thorne considerably.
Once she had finished, she transferred the bones to her necklace to join the others.
‘Should be more power in there than in the bones of even the strongest witch,’ I remarked.
‘Then let’s hope we don’t need it. It’s too quiet here, but that won’t last.’
‘Why didn’t they just jump through the gate after us?’ I asked.
‘It was already closing as I leaped through,’ Thorne replied. ‘Beelzebub was in too much pain to control it, and it had pulled away from him. But they’ll find it again eventually, and then they’ll follow us.’
‘Will they know it leads to the Fiend’s domain?’
‘That’s what they’ll guess – although gates don’t always lead to the same domain. If it moves before they can find it, they won’t know where we’ve gone and will need incredibly strong magic to locate us again – they’ll have to be well clear of the basilica to use it. Do you know where the Fiend’s throne room is?’
I shook my head. ‘I saw lots of dungeons, but never the throne room . . . At least, I don’t recollect being there. The truth is, it was so terrible that my mind won’t let me remember most of it.’
‘So that’s two things we have to search for – the blade and the gate to get us out of here. Let’s look for the blade first,’ Thorne said.
But the difficulty that faced us soon became apparent. We left the kitchen, went down three flights of stairs to a courtyard and were faced with a choice of three passageways. We chose the central and widest one, which had a high arched roof.
We hurried along, but after about an hour we had still not reached its end; nor did we have any idea where it was leading.
‘This place is vast,’ Thorne observed. ‘We could search for years and still not find it.’
It was true. The sheer size of the Fiend’s domain made our task nearly impossible.
But we had to plough on. When, after another half-hour, we finally reached the end of the passageway, I didn’t like what I saw. We found ourselves in a vast open circular space. Above us was a dome so high that we might have been looking up at clouds. Before us was a dark grey lake, its waters still and forbidding. Its surface was like glass and it looked deep enough to hide anything. It filled almost the whole area, but for a narrow path that led away to our left, hugging the curved stone wall.
Suddenly there was a cry from far above – the screech of a corpsefowl. We both looked up and saw the bird flapping across the calm lake towards us. It glided for a few seconds, swooped lower, then curved away, heading back towards the centre.
‘That’s probably Morwena’s familiar,’ I said. ‘This lake would be the ideal place for her to lurk.’
‘But we heard that cry back in the last domain,’ Thorne protested. ‘How can she be here? The gate closed after me, and they can’t have found a way through already.’
‘We heard her as we first entered the city,’ I said. ‘She had plenty of time to use the gate before we faced Beelzebub. And she didn’t appear when you killed Betsy and the water witches. So she’d probably already gone then.’
‘But how would she know we were coming to this domain?’
‘She’s powerful and crafty. She might have worked it out for herself. As a loyal daughter of the Fiend, she might have been given more information than the rest of his followers. Perhaps she knows about the dagger that Tom’s mam used against the Fiend before. Don’t forget, she was the one who first knew when I entered the dark.’
‘Even if Morwena is here, together we’re a match for her!’ asserted Thorne confidently, and I knew she was feeling guilty about being lured in by Morwena and Betsy to trick me. ‘She can only use her blood-eye on o
ne person at a time. Grimalkin told me how she and Tom fought the water witches. They came face to face with Morwena and she paralysed Grimalkin with her blood-filled eye. But Tom wasn’t affected, so he used his silver chain to bind her, bringing her to her knees. That freed Grimalkin, and she killed the water witch. We can do the same. When she puts one of us in thrall, the other can kill her. That way she’ll be dead for ever – it’ll be the end of her.’
Thorne made it sound so easy, but Morwena was very dangerous, even to someone as strong as a witch assassin. The lids of that witch’s left eye were pinned together with a piece of bone. When she opened it, one glance from that terrible blood-eye could freeze you to the spot. But it was true that she could only use it on one person at a time.
So if we faced her, I hoped she would paralyse me, so that Thorne would be the one to kill her. I didn’t want to use the sort of magic it would take to destroy her unless it was absolutely necessary.
Thorne turned to look at me. ‘So what do we do – go back or follow the path around the lake and risk being attacked? You decide, Alice, but do it quickly. You can’t stay in the dark much longer without great cost to yourself. And who knows how much time has already passed out in the world?’
She was right: I couldn’t dither. I made up my mind instantly. The thought of retracing my steps filled me with dismay.
‘Let’s follow the path,’ I said.
Blades at the ready, Thorne led the way. The path was narrow but dry, for the water was at least a foot below it.
For the first few minutes we made good progress, although I could see nothing to suggest that the path would lead anywhere significant.
It was then that I noticed the mist that seemed to be forming out in the centre of the lake. Tendrils were spreading across its calm surface, meandering towards us.
‘Faster!’ Thorne cried, having noticed it too. We began to run, but within moments had to slow to a walk again. The mist was all around us now, so thick that I could hardly make out the shape of Thorne’s body even though she was only a couple of paces in front.