Alice (26 page)

I began to sweat and shake. Spiders were at the top of the list of the creepy-crawlies I feared. This was a nightmare. How could I do it?

But Maggie had come close to killing me. If I refused now, I would forfeit my life. Even Grimalkin would be unable to save me.

It took all my willpower to force my body to obey. Slowly and nervously, with a dry mouth, I put my hand through the hole towards the huge, terrifying spider.

Despite my fear, I was determined not to let it show. I would not cry out in pain. Why give ’em that satisfaction?

The spider placed one of its hairy legs across my wrist. I shuddered at its touch. The leg felt very heavy, and I knew it was pinning down my hand so that I couldn’t move it.
When the creature opened its mouth, it took all my strength not to scream, for it had the long, curved, poisonous fangs of a snake.

It bit down quickly into the soft mound of flesh below my thumb. I groaned, but somehow managed not to cry out. The pain was severe. It felt as if two hot needles were pressing deeper and deeper into my flesh. Then the blood began to flow, forming a red pool in the palm of my hand. It seemed to go on for many minutes – much longer than what the other two girls had had to endure – but at last Maggie told me to withdraw my hand.

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.