I didn’t hold it against my dress as the other two had. What was the point of that? I’d only struggle to get the stains out afterwards – that’s if I survived the night. I just let it fall to my side, and returned to my place by Lizzie, leaving a trail of blood on the flags.
A voice boomed from the cabinet, making the piles of bones vibrate again. It was harsh and rasping, like the teeth of a coarse file grinding against jagged metal.
‘The weakest is the girl Gloria. Her bone magic will hardly be worth the name. She’d make a better servant than a witch – more suited to cooking and cleaning. As for Marsha, she is thrice as strong and will become a powerful blood witch. The most powerful of all by far, however, is the girl Alice. All she needs is a suitable familiar.’
I saw Maggie’s face twist with anger, and the other witches gave gasps of surprise. Maggie had wanted me to be the weakest and Marsha to be the strongest – I was sure of it. But I felt sorry for poor Gloria. As the declared weakest, she would be the one to forfeit her life. As for what he’d said about me, I was surprised. I was a reluctant trainee witch and didn’t think I’d any special aptitude for the craft – I didn’t want to be good at it.
But the daemon hadn’t finished yet. ‘Although she is the strongest, Alice must forfeit her life now. I sense danger. One day she may become an enemy of the dark. Better safe than sorry, so take her strength now and share it between the other two!’
‘That ain’t fair!’ I cried out – arguing my own case for the first time. ‘I’ve passed the test and beaten the other two! I’m the strongest. Why should I die?’
‘Shut your face, girl! Raknid has spoken, and the Tester’s word is law. Even Grimalkin will abide by it. Is that not so?’ Maggie asked, looking at the witch assassin.
I turned towards Grimalkin, hoping against hope that she might intervene again, but she simply compressed her lips and gave the faintest of nods.
So next I turned back to plead with Lizzie. ‘Help me!’ I cried. ‘How can this be right when I’m the strongest?’
‘I can do nothing, girl. The law is the law.’
Nobody would help me now. This was it.
I thought they were going to give me to Raknid, but to my surprise the witches began to chant again. Once more the metal cabinet began to vibrate and the room grew steadily warmer. When the spell was completed, there was a feeling of peace and calm. Raknid was gone. The daemon had returned to the dark.
‘Bring the girl here!’ Maggie commanded, and Lizzie pushed me towards her.
To my surprise, there was a sad expression on the clan leader’s face. ‘I’ve done this many times, girl,’ she said, ‘and I know you must be afraid, so I’d like to offer you a few words of comfort. First of all I can promise you it won’t hurt much. There’ll be a pressure inside your head, and then you’ll fall away into soothing darkness and the pain of this life will be over.
‘Next, I want you to think how you’ll be helping your clan – so your death won’t be in vain. Two other young witches, Marsha and Gloria, will receive your strength and be better able to serve our needs. And you have a lot of power to yield, so remember that. You leave a legacy, girl – be glad to serve us.’
I glanced across at Lizzie. It wasn’t that I expected any help because she’d told me plainly that she could do nothing to oppose clan law. But I thought she might at least be a bit sad that I was going to die; even a little annoyed because of the time she’d wasted in training me. But her face was a mask – no trace of emotion – and her eyes were like two black coals.
‘It ain’t right!’ I shouted. ‘What do I care about you lot? My life’s not even worth tuppence to you. I’ll be dead!’
‘Being dead’s not that bad,’ Maggie told me. ‘We’ll carry your body to Witch Dell and bury it there in a shallow grave under the rotting leaves. You’ll be nice and cosy, and when the first beam of the full moon falls on your grave, you’ll come back to life and be able to go hunting for victims. Dead witches really love the taste of blood. And there are so many delicious flavours – rats, mice, rabbits, even humans if you manage to catch one.’
‘You’re lying!’ I screeched. ‘That only happens to dead witches and I ain’t a witch yet. I’ll just fall into the dark and you know it!’
Maggie didn’t reply. She knew what I’d said was true.
I turned and ran towards the big door, but then realized I had no hope of getting away because it was barred. It would have taken me several minutes to draw every bar across, and even then I probably wouldn’t have had the strength to open that heavy door by myself; the drawbridge was probably raised as well. But I wasn’t even thinking then. I was desperate, like a frightened animal in a trap when the gamekeeper comes to collect it.
The witches caught me easily and brought me back to stand before Maggie. My hands were bound behind my back and I was forced to my knees before her. I felt numb: I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. Memories of my childhood flitted through my mind. I saw my mam and dad rolling on the floor, fighting; he was trying to throttle her while she was scratching at his eyes with her long nails. But there were happier ones too: walking through the woods alone, just listening to the birds. My life had hardly begun, though. I’d hoped that somehow it would start to get better, but it was just going to end here in Malkin Tower.
There was nothing I could do to save myself. They had made up their minds, and I wasn’t strong enough to fight them all.
I was held in position by two witches while Gloria and Marsha each placed a hand on my left shoulder. Then Maggie put her hands on top of my head and exerted a steady pressure, beginning the sing-song chant that would draw forth my strength and life into the bodies of the two girls, leaving me stone-dead on the flags.
At first I struggled, but then I felt the beginnings of pain: a slow pressure building right inside my head. The pain grew until I thought my head would burst. Now I could hardly think. All that was left was emotion – a mixture of anger and resentment.
Why should I die while Marsha and Gloria lived? I thought. It wasn’t fair!
I must have screamed, or maybe I just cried out in anger. The next thing I knew, the hands had released their grip on my body and Maggie had fallen away.
I lurched to my feet. Maggie was lying on her back, her whole body twitching. Her eyes had rolled right up into her head and she was spitting out small pieces of tooth, vomit dribbling from her mouth. The two witches who had held me down were on their knees, cradling their hands against their bodies, their faces twisted in pain. The two girls were sobbing.
I looked about me and saw eyes staring at me in horror. What had happened? But once again, Grimalkin was smiling. She stepped forward to seize my arm, and then turned and spoke to Lizzie.
‘The girl is free to go,’ she said. ‘Another life must be forfeit.’
Lizzie nodded and smiled back. Within moments my hands had been released; the big doors of Malkin Tower were opened and the drawbridge lowered. Astonished, I walked out into the fresh air with Grimalkin at my side. Lizzie was following at our heels. I couldn’t believe it was over and I was still alive.
On the drawbridge the witch assassin leaned close to my left ear.
‘I would have stood on that spider too, Alice,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what we do. We are the strong ones: we squash anything that we don’t like. Anything that threatens us gets smeared!’
All the way home, Bony Lizzie refused to answer my questions, but back at the cottage she finally relented.
‘Will they still come for me?’ I asked. ‘Will I still have to die?’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘No, girl, you’re safe for now. Maggie wasn’t strong enough to suck away your power. So she paid the price. When she’s well enough, one of the other girls will have to die in your place. It will be Gloria as she is the weakest.’
‘Why couldn’t Maggie do it?’ I asked. ‘Why couldn’t she take my power?’
‘Who knows?’ said Lizzie, giving me a strange smile.
‘But the witch who takes another’s power must be stronger than her victim. Otherwise she pays a hefty price.’
‘Are you saying that I’m somehow stronger than Maggie?’ I asked in amazement.
‘Not yet, girl, so don’t get ideas above your station. There’s a lot of work in front of you yet. But you must have the potential – otherwise Maggie wouldn’t have suffered that attack.’
I STILL REMEMBERED my own Testing as if it had happened yesterday – how I had crushed that spider beneath the heel of my pointy shoe; how I had been forced to place my hand in the glass-topped cabinet and let Raknid, the spider daemon, bite me. Afterwards he had said I was the strongest of the three girls . . .
Raknid’s words had indeed proved to be correct. I was the enemy of the Fiend and his servants, and that now meant that Raknid was my enemy. If he had his way, I would die here.
But not if I could help it! I was strong, and I would do what was necessary.
‘Look! Up there!’ cried Thorne, pointing to something almost directly above us. It was the skelt which had led us here. It seemed to be writhing, legs twitching, twisting, spinning, suspended from what appeared to be a rope.
No – it wasn’t a rope. The creature was bound fast by a silken thread spun from the daemon’s body, still out of sight, high above us. And now the skelt was being hauled aloft. I watched it being pulled higher and higher into the darkness of the roof, where the light of my candle couldn’t reach; up into the place where the spider daemon was waiting to feed.
The creature had paid a terrible price for guiding us to the throne room.
‘Perhaps Raknid is too occupied with the skelt to notice us . . .’ Thorne suggested.
But there was no conviction in her voice. We both knew the truth.
Raknid would know we were here. He would feed quickly, drain the skelt, and then we would be next on the menu. To escape from the throne room we would have to fight him head on.
‘Let’s find the blade and get out of here,’ I said, hurrying towards the gigantic throne.
But the nearer we got, the less I liked what I saw. The throne was raised up on a base that was set above the grassy path. We could walk underneath it and search without having to stoop. It seemed almost too easy. Was it a trap? Was there something else here, in addition to the spider daemon? No sooner had that thought entered my head than I glimpsed something moving under the throne. There were eyes reflected in the gleam of the candle flame.
I stepped beneath the Fiend’s throne, the candle held before me, Thorne at my shoulder. But then I saw that there were lots of eyes belonging to different large insects. Some of them were huge. The nearest one looked like a centipede and had a long undulating body the thickness of my arm.
More scary creepy-crawlies . . .
Then a further horror was revealed by the light of the candle.
All these creatures had human faces.
The centipede spoke, its voice hardly more than the rustle and crackle of dry dead leaves stirred by the wind. But somehow it communicated extreme sadness.
‘Once we walked the earth with human bodies,’ it explained. ‘We served the Fiend on earth, but eventually displeased him. This is our punishment – to take these shapes and crawl for all eternity beneath his throne. There are others like us who live in the vaults beneath the basilica, and also in some of the deepest cellars of the city. We hate to be gazed upon. Depart from here and leave us to suffer.’
The creature squinted towards the candle flame and its eyes began to water.
Thorne’s own eyes widened in astonishment and pity, and it was left to me to reply.
‘We will leave as soon as we can,’ I replied. ‘But first we must search for something. There is a dagger hidden beneath this throne. Show us where it is and we will be away at once.’
None of those pitiful creatures replied; instead, so accustomed to darkness that they were dazzled by the feeble light of my candle, they turned and fled.
Without a word, Thorne and I began to search the grassy area beneath the throne. Where could the dagger be?
It might be hidden in the grass; this was no longer the fragrant, flower-filled carpet that had led from the door to the throne. It was sodden and stank of rot, so that our shoes squelched with each step, and it was covered with disgusting debris – dead skin shed by the creatures who had fled, along with coarse hair and warty protuberances. I avoided touching it with my hand and just pushed everything aside with my shoes.
We completed our searches at the same time. We’d found nothing.
‘Perhaps it’s buried in the ground?’ Thorne suggested.
Were we going to have to dig up the whole area under the throne? I wondered.
‘The blade could be anywhere,’ I said. ‘What if it’s already been moved? If Morwena knew we were coming here to get it, she could have taken it.’
Then, suddenly, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. ‘There’s someone else who could have hidden it . . .’ I murmured.
Thorne nodded. ‘You mean Raknid? Yes, I think that’s very likely.’
Together we emerged from beneath that immense throne and gazed upwards. The skelt was no longer visible. Strands of the web were fastened to the walls and various parts of the floor, each one thicker than my forefinger; there were even a couple attached high on the throne.
I held the candle up as far as I could. It illuminated the lower edge of the central part of the web. It had been constructed on a vast scale, and there were things stuck to it: desiccated, long-dead things – Raknid’s victims.
But they were not the flies you might find in an ordinary spider’s web.
These had arms and legs; heads too.
They were human.
‘If I were Raknid, I’d bind the blade high up in my web so that anyone seeking it would have to climb up to reach it,’ said Thorne.
‘That’s what I have to do . . .’ I realized.
I was afraid, but I hadn’t come all this way and gone through so much to fail now.
Thorne pointed at the nearest strand of web and shook her head. ‘It’s sticky – you’d get bound to it. And the moment you touch it, the web will vibrate, alerting the spider daemon. His feet won’t stick to the web like yours. He’ll scuttle across and inject you with venom. You’ll be paralysed. Then he’ll tug you up into the darkness and start to feed on you. You’ll be conscious all the time, and you’ll be in agony. He won’t just take your blood. He’ll suck the brains from your skull. He’ll drain every bit of fluid from your body until you’re just a dry dead husk. Don’t you see? He wants you to climb it. So don’t do it, Alice. There has to be another way.’
Then, as if he had been listening to every word we’d uttered, Raknid spoke to us from the darkness above, his deep, harsh voice vibrating through my head and setting my teeth on edge.
‘Yes, climb up to me, little witch! Let’s see how brave you really are. Don’t listen to your cowardly dead friend. What does she know? I have the Dolorous blade that you seek. Are you brave enough to try and take it from me?’
‘I’ll climb up and confront him!’ said Thorne furiously. ‘I will stick to his web, but when he attacks he’ll find me no easy prey. This blade will take out his eyes!’
‘Wait for a moment. Let me speak to him first.’ I held Thorne’s arm to prevent her climbing the nearest strand up into the web.
A slow anger began to build within me. Back in Malkin Tower, this daemon had taken my blood, and then condemned me to death. Now I would not only take the blade; I would pay Raknid back for what he had done.
‘I think you lie!’ I shouted up into the dark. ‘I don’t believe you have the blade.’
‘Why would I lie? The blade is here with me.’
‘Then show it to me! Prove that you have it. Why should I climb up there for nothing?’
‘For a little witch you have caused us big trouble. I knew that when I tasted your blood. You are strong for a mere girl, and in your prime might have become p
eerless; but you will not survive to fulfil your potential. I was right about the danger I sensed within you. You are a grave threat to my master. But I will show you the blade because I know it will bring you to my side! And then I will kill you!’
Suddenly the huge web trembled. Raknid had probably been crouching on a ledge far above. Now he had stepped onto the threads, causing it to shake. He was climbing down towards us. Within seconds he was taking up position at the very centre of his web.
He was huge – far larger than he’d been in the metal cabinet in Malkin Tower. The rounded central part of his body, which was covered in long silky red-brown hair, was perhaps the size of a bull, but his eight long, thin black legs tripled his size.
And there at his side was a dagger, stuck to the web.
‘I see a blade!’ I cried. ‘But how do I know it’s Dolorous? Ain’t no way to tell from this distance, is there? Bring it nearer so that I can be sure!’
‘No, little witch. You must climb up to me!’
I leaned across to whisper into Thorne’s ear: ‘When he falls, be ready to slay him.’
Her eyes widened in astonishment.
Then I ran forward and held the flame of my candle against the nearest strand of the web. It smouldered a little, but the strand remained intact. It did not catch fire.
The candle flickered and was about to go out.
‘You fool!’ Raknid laughed.
But I was no fool; just desperate enough to do what had to be done. I was gathering my power. That was the reason for the delay. I did not speak a word. I didn’t need spells – though I knew there might be a price to pay later.
I remembered the warning that Agnes Sowerbutts had once given me regarding my use of magic: