Alice (23 page)

‘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 one 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.

To make things worse, the path had suddenly narrowed and become slippery. It was barely higher than the lake now, and
in places dipped down so that our pointy shoes were splashing through shallow water.

At any moment I expected Morwena to surge up and attack, but after a tense few moments the path widened out again. Suddenly there were cobbles underfoot, and where my left shoulder and arm had been almost scraping the wall, now it seemed to have receded. There was space to our left, but how much? And if it was veering away from the lake, where did this path lead?

The mist was still thick, so I held my left hand out in front of me to stop myself from blundering into the wall. But as we left the lake, my fear of the water witch slowly abated.

The attack took us by surprise. There wasn’t even the faintest warning.

Morwena had not been lurking in the lake. Although she was an entity that rarely ventured far from water, she was waiting for us on dry land.

She appeared out of the mist, standing directly before me. Clawed, webbed feet gripped the cobbles; her skirt and smock were covered in mud and green slime. Her mouth was open, revealing four large yellow fangs, and her fleshless nose was a sharp triangular bone.

All those things I noted in less than a heartbeat. But then one terrible aspect of her captured my full attention.

Her blood-filled eye was staring directly at me. The bone that pinned it had been removed.

I had got my wish: I was now her target.

I WAS PARALYSED
– rooted to the spot. That red, blood-filled eye seemed to grow and grow. I was scared, but one part of me was detached because I had faith in Thorne. It was better this way; better that Morwena had turned her attention on me, if I wanted to avoid using my magic.

But suddenly I was aware that Morwena was not alone. There were other water witches moving up to her side and attacking Thorne, who was now being driven back by the ferocity of that onslaught of fangs and claws.

Morwena took a step towards me, her arms outstretched, ready to rend the flesh from my bones. I was no longer detached; I was terrified. More and more water witches
surged past me to attack Thorne. Even her great skill and courage would surely not enable her to defeat so many quickly enough to return and save me.

The foul breath of the powerful witch was in my face now, her fangs ready to bite. I could not think. My mind was paralysed like my body. I could not summon up any will. Even if I’d wanted to, it was now too late to use my magic. For me it was over. I had intended to surrender my life for Tom so that he could use my death to destroy the Fiend for ever. Now I would die for nothing. Everything that I had done from the moment I was born had been in vain.

Then something happened that I could make no sense of . . .

Something was emerging from Morwena’s open mouth.

At first I thought it was some kind of tongue – maybe an aspect of a water witch that I’d never seen before. It was sharp and ridged. It was also covered in blood.

Blood poured from Morwena’s mouth, cascading down her chin, and I saw that her blood-eye was no longer looking at me. Both eyes were closed and she screamed in agony.

Finding that I was now able to move, I quickly stepped backwards, out of her reach. She twisted away and, in that moment, I realized what had happened to her.

A huge skelt had scuttled up onto her back and had transfixed her with its bone-tube, driving it into the back of her neck so that it had emerged from her mouth. As Morwena staggered and fell forward onto her face, the skelt removed its bone-tube and stabbed it into her again, right between the shoulder blades. Immediately the translucent tube
turned a bright red as it sucked the blood from her body.

Other witches screamed in anger and ran to her aid, but immediately they had problems of their own. There were more skelts scuttling across the ground, each targeting a water witch.

The mist was lifting, the visibility improving by the second – had it been created by the dark magic of Morwena? It seemed likely. Another skelt scuttled towards me, its thin multi-jointed legs a blur. It moved so fast that I barely had time to react. It passed by less than an arm’s length away, but didn’t so much as look at me; all its attention was on the slimy witches, who were desperately trying to flee.

‘Alice!’

I turned and saw Thorne running towards me, her blades red with blood. Several of the witches were on the ground, each under attack by a skelt.

Thorne pointed towards the stone wall, and I saw a small archway which the mist had hidden from our sight. We ran through it, and found ourselves in a large oval antechamber with three narrow passageways leading from it.

Which one led to the throne room? I wondered. Maybe none of them, but anywhere seemed safer than near the water’s edge.

‘I’ll try sniffing them in turn,’ I told Thorne.

Long-sniffing could sometimes warn of danger. At least I could avoid choosing a passageway that held a direct threat to us. But before I could start, something moved into the chamber behind us.

It was a skelt.

Thorne readied her blades and moved between me and the deadly creature. For a moment it halted and stared at us – perhaps it was already bloated with the blood of the witches and needed no more sustenance – but then, suddenly, it scuttled towards the entrance of the left-hand passageway. There it paused and looked back at us, before disappearing from view.

Was it going back the way it had come? If so, others might follow it at any moment, and some of them might still be hungry.

But something very strange happened: the skelt slowly backed out of the passageway until its large red eyes were staring at us once more, then re-entered the passageway. We didn’t move. I watched the entrance to the chamber in case more skelts came in; Thorne watched the passage the lone skelt had taken.

It was then that the creature backed out into the chamber for the second time. Once more it regarded us with its red eyes – they were exactly the same colour as the rubies in the hero swords.

It was strange that the image of a skelt should adorn the hilts of those weapons. I wondered what the connection between them was. Would the Dolorous dagger, the blade I had come to retrieve, be fashioned in a similar way?

‘I think it wants us to follow . . .’ I said slowly, trying to make sense of its strange behaviour.

‘Why would a skelt do that?’ Thorne challenged. ‘If we were to follow, the others might follow us, and then we’d be trapped between them.’

‘It might want to lead us to the throne room.’

‘Why should it help us?’

‘Not all creatures of the dark are on the side of the Fiend, are they? They didn’t attack
us
just now. They killed the water witches and left us alone.’

Thorne looked doubtful. ‘True, but those skelts in the hot domain weren’t exactly friendly. The ones that came out of that boiling lake would have drained our blood for sure if they had caught us.’

‘Maybe they were just exceptionally hungry. Perhaps the skelts are different here in the Fiend’s domain? Maybe they are divided amongst themselves, just like we witches are? Some are for the Fiend and some against him. Ain’t it worth taking a chance? As you keep reminding me, I’m running out of time.’

Without even waiting for Thorne’s reply, I strode across and entered the passageway. Moments later, I heard her pointy shoes clicking along behind me. We walked in silence for several minutes. At one point the passageway grew very dark and I pulled the candle stub from my pocket and ignited it with a wish. It was a minor use of magic – better than being unable to see danger ahead. I couldn’t hear the skelt ahead of us, but it had to be there.

We emerged into a vast, cavernous space. I held up the candle, but its light was feeble – like a solitary firefly trying to illuminate a dark forest at midnight. At first I could make no sense of what I was seeing. The room was huge, longer than it was wide, and I looked up, suddenly aware of something else.

Curtains seemed to be hanging from the arched wooden beams far above.

I realized that finally, after our long search, we had reached the throne room. There was no doubt: the whole purpose of this space was to provide an approach to that throne. There was a path leading towards it, but rather than being covered in marble or carpet, it was formed of grass and flowers.

There was a multitude of flowers with pale yellow petals, which I recognized as primroses. There were daisies too, and buttercups, and blooms I didn’t recognize, all filling the air with a pleasant scent. It seemed strange – more appropriate to Pan’s domain than that of the Fiend. I wondered if things were changing here because of the Fiend’s absence. But then I heard the drone of insects and I shuddered, thinking of Beelzebub. Listening more closely, I decided that these sounded more like the gnats and midges of a sleepy summer evening than the bloated bluebottles that had filled my nose and mouth.

No doubt many terrified prisoners had been dragged to this place to suffer the Fiend’s cruel wrath, but I’d certainly never been here before.