The Spook's Sacrifice (2 page)

Your mam's there fighting the dark though, so no
doubt this attack has something to do with her.'

Afterwards the Spook helped me unwrap my silver
chain from the body of the maenad and we dragged
her into the eastern garden. We dug a narrow pit for
her, deeper than its length and breadth, me doing most
of the work as usual. Then we eased her into that dark
shaft head first. She wasn't a witch, but the Spook
never took any chances with servants of the dark –
especially those we didn't know too much about. One
night when the moon was full, dead or not, she might
try to scratch her way to the surface. She wouldn't
realize that she was heading in the opposite direction.

That done, the Spook sent me down to the village to
find the local stonemason and blacksmith. By late
evening they'd fashioned the stones and bars over her
grave. It hadn't taken my master long to deduce the
answer to his two other questions. He'd found two
small wooden bloodstained troughs right at the edge
of the garden. Most likely they'd been full of blood
before the boggart had drunk its fill.

'My guess, lad, is that there was something mixed
into the blood. Maybe it made the boggart sleep, or
confused it. That's why it didn't detect the maenad
entering the garden and later killed her when it
shouldn't have. Pity she died. We could have
questioned her and found out why she'd come and
who'd sent her.'

'Could the Fiend be behind it?' I asked. 'Could he
have sent her to kill me?'

The Fiend, also known as the Devil, had been loose
in the world since the previous August. He'd been
summoned by the three Pendle witch clans – the
Malkins, Deanes and Mouldheels. Now the clans were
at war with each other – some witches in thrall to the
Fiend, others his bitter enemies. I'd encountered him
three times since then, but although each encounter
had left me shaken to my very bones, I knew it was
unlikely the Devil would try to kill me by his own
hand because he'd been hobbled.

Just as a horse can be hobbled, having its legs tied
together so it can't wander too far, the Fiend had been
hobbled by someone in the past; his power limited. If
he chose to kill me himself, he would rule the world for
only a hundred years, a span that he would consider
far too short. So, according to the rules of the hobble,
he had one choice: get one of his own children to kill
me, or try to win me to his side. If he could manage to
convert me to the dark, he'd rule the world until its
very end. That's what he'd tried to do the last time we
met. Of course, if I died by some other hand – that of
the maenad, for example – then the Fiend might slowly
come to dominate the world anyway. So had he sent
her?

The Spook was looking thoughtful. 'The Fiend? It's
a possibility, lad. We must be on our guard. You were
lucky to survive that attack.'

I almost reminded him that it was the intervention of
Alice rather than luck but thought better of it. It had
been a hard night and nothing would be gained by
annoying him.

The following night I found it hard to sleep and after a
while I got out of bed, lit my candle and started
to re-read Mam's letter, which I'd received in the
spring.

Dear Tom,

The struggle against the dark in my own land has been
long and hard and is approaching a crisis. However, we two have much to discuss
and I do have further things to reveal and a request to make. I need something
from you. That and your help. Were there any way at all to avoid this, I would
not ask it of you. But these are words that must be said face to face, not
in a letter, and so I intend to return home for a short visit on the eve of
midsummer.

I have written to Jack to inform him of my arrival
so I look forward to seeing you at the farm at the appointed time. Work hard
at your lessons, son, and be optimistic, no matter how dark the future seems.
Your strength is greater than you realize.

Love,

Mam

In less than a week it would be midsummer and the
Spook and I would be travelling south to visit my
brother Jack's farm and meet Mam. I had missed her
and couldn't wait to see her. But I was also anxious to
find out what she wanted from me.

The following morning it was lessons as usual.
I was in the third year of my apprenticeship to
my master and was studying how to fight the dark: in
the first year I'd learned about boggarts, in the second,
witches; now my topic was 'The History of the Dark'.

'Well, lad, prepare to take notes,' commanded the
Spook, scratching at his beard.

I opened my notebook, dipped my pen into the
bottle of ink and waited for him to begin the lesson.
I was sitting on the bench in the western garden. It was
a sunny summer's morning and there wasn't a single
cloud in the wide blue sky. Directly in front of us were
the fells, dotted with sheep, while all around we heard
birdsong and the pleasant drowsy hum of insects.

'As I've already told you, lad, the dark manifests
itself in different ways at different times and different
places,' said the Spook, beginning to pace up and
down in front of the bench. 'But, as we know to our
cost, the most formidable aspect of the dark in the
County and in the wider world beyond is the Fiend.'

My heart lurched and I had a lump in my throat
as I remembered our last encounter. The Fiend had
revealed a terrible secret to me. He had claimed that
Alice was also his daughter – the Devil's daughter. It
was difficult to imagine, but what if it was true? Alice
was my closest friend and had saved my life on more
than one occasion. If what the Fiend had told me really
was
true, it would mean that the Spook had been right
to banish her: we could never be together again – the
thought of it was almost impossible to bear.

'But although the Fiend is our biggest concern,'
continued the Spook, 'there are other denizens of the
dark who, with assistance from witches, mages or
other meddling humans, are also able to pass through
portals into our world. Numbered amongst them are
the Old Gods such as Golgoth, whom you'll remember
we dealt with on Anglezarke Moor.'

I nodded. That had been a close-run thing and had
nearly cost me my life.

'We must be grateful that he's sleeping once more,'
said my master, 'but others are very much awake. Take
your mam's homeland, Greece. As I told you yesterday,
a fierce female deity called the Ordeen, who is
worshipped by the maenads, has caused bloodshed
there on a vast scale since time immemorial. No doubt
she's at the heart of all that your mam's trying to
contend with.

'There's not a lot I know about the Ordeen. But
apparently she arrives with her followers, who kill
everything that moves for miles around. And the
maenads, who are usually scattered across Greece,
gather in large numbers to await her arrival. They're
like vultures ready to feast upon the flesh of the dead
and the dying. For them it's a harvest, a time of plenty,
the reward they receive for their worship of the
Ordeen and her followers. No doubt your mam will
have lots more to tell us – there are blank pages in my
Bestiary that need to be filled.'

The Spook's Bestiary, one of the biggest and most
interesting books in his library, was full of all manner
of terrible creatures. But there were gaps where
information was scarce and he updated it whenever he
could.

'I do know, however, that unlike the other Old Gods,
the Ordeen doesn't need human assistance to pass
through a portal into this world. Even the Fiend
needed the help of the Pendle witches. But it seems
that she can pass through her portal at will – and also
return when she pleases.'

'The "followers" who arrive with her through the
portal – what are they like?' I asked.

'They are denizens of the dark: daemons and
elementals. The daemons mostly have the appearance
of men or women but possess terrible strength and are
very cruel. In addition there are the vaengir – flying
lamia witches. So many have now joined her that only
a few remain elsewhere – they live alone or in pairs
like your mam's sisters. Imagine what it must be like
when the Ordeen arrives – a host of those creatures
swooping down from the sky to rend and tear the flesh
of their victims! It doesn't bear thinking about, lad!'

It certainly didn't. Mam's two sisters were flying
lamias. They'd fought on our side during the battle on
Pendle hill, wreaking havoc on the three witch clans
who opposed us.

'Aye, it's a dangerous place, Greece. Your mam has
much to contend with . . . There are also feral lamia
witches – the ones who scuttle about on four limbs.

They're very common in Greece, especially in the
mountains. After this lesson's over I suggest you go up
to the library, look them up in my Bestiary, revise your
knowledge of them and enter a summary of what you
find in your notebook.'

'You mentioned that "elementals" live with the
Ordeen as well? What kind are they?' I asked.

'Fire elementals – something we don't have in the
County, lad. But I'll tell you what I know about them
on another day. For now we'd better continue your
study of the Old Tongue, which is much harder to
learn than Latin or Greek.'

The Spook was right. The rest of the lesson was so
difficult it made my head hurt. It was very important
that I learn the Old Tongue though: it was commonly
used by the Old Gods and their disciples; also in
grimoires – books of dark magic used by
necromancers.

I was relieved when the lesson came to a close and I
was able to go up to my master's library. I really
enjoyed my visits there. It was the Spook's pride and
joy and he'd inherited it, along with the house, from
his own master, Henry Horrocks. Some of the books
had belonged to previous spooks and went back many
generations; some had been written by John Gregory
himself. They chronicled a lifetime of knowledge
acquired practising his trade and fighting the dark.

The Spook always worried that something might
happen to his library: when Alice was staying with us,
her job had been to make extra copies of the books,
writing them out by hand. Mr Gregory believed that
one of his main duties was to preserve that library for
future spooks, adding to the fund of knowledge
whenever possible.

There were racks of shelves containing thousands of
books but I headed straight for the Bestiary. It was a list
of all sorts of creatures, from boggarts and daemons to
elementals and witches, along with personal accounts
and sketches where the Spook described how he'd
dealt with the dark. I flicked through the pages until I
came to 'Lamia Witches'.

The first Lamia was a powerful enchantress of great
beauty. She loved Zeus, the leader of the Old Gods,
who was already married to the goddess Hera.
Unwisely, Lamia then bore Zeus' children. On
discovering this, in a jealous rage, Hera slew all but
one of these unfortunate infants. Driven insane by
grief, Lamia began to kill children wherever she found
them so that streams and rivers ran red with their
blood and the air trembled with the cries of distraught
parents. At last the Gods punished her by shifting her
shape so that her lower body was sinuous and scaled
like that of a serpent.

Thus changed, she now turned her attentions to
young men. She would call to them in a forest glade,
only her beautiful head and shoulders visible above the
lush green grass. Once she had lured him close, she
wrapped her lower body around her victim tightly,
squeezing the breath from his helpless body as her
mouth fastened upon his neck until the very last drop
of blood was drained.

Lamia later had a lover called Chaemog, a spiderthing
that dwelt in the deepest caverns of the earth.
She bore him triplets, all female, and these were the
first lamia witches. On their thirteenth birthday they
quarrelled with their mother and, after a terrible fight,
tore off all her limbs and ripped her body into pieces.
They fed every bit of her, including her heart, to a herd
of wild boar.

The book then went on to describe the different
types of lamia witch – what they looked like, how they
behaved – and, most importantly for a spook, how to
deal with them. I knew quite a lot about lamia witches
already. The Spook had lived for years with a domestic
lamia witch called Meg and had kept her feral sister,
Marcia, locked in a pit in the cellar of his Anglezarke
house. They had both returned to Greece, but during
my time at Anglezarke I'd learned a lot about them.

I continued to read, making brief notes as I did so. It
was very useful revision. There was a reference to the
flying lamias, called vaengir, which the Spook had
mentioned earlier. My thoughts turned to Mam. Even
as a young child I'd known that she was different. She
had a slight accent, which marked her out as someone
who'd not been born in the County. She shunned direct
sunlight and during the day often had the kitchen
curtains closed.

Over time my knowledge of Mam had grown. I'd
learned how Dad had come to her rescue in Greece.

And then later she'd told me that I was special, a
seventh son of a seventh son and her gift to the County,
a weapon to be used against the dark. But the final
pieces of the puzzle were still missing. What exactly
was
Mam?

Mam's sisters were vaengir – flying feral lamias
who, as the Spook had just explained, were only rarely
found beyond the Ordeen's portal. They were now in
Malkin Tower, guarding her trunks, which contained
money, potions and books. It seemed to me that Mam
must also be a lamia. Probably vaengir too. That
seemed most likely.

It was another mystery I needed to solve – though I
couldn't just ask her outright. It seemed to me that
Mam had to tell me herself. And I might find out the
answer very soon.

Late in the afternoon, given a few hours off by the
Spook, I went for a stroll on the fells: I climbed high
onto Parlick Pike, watched the shadows of clouds
slowly drifting across the valley below and listened to
the lapwings' distinctive
peewit
calls.

How I missed Alice! We'd spent many a happy hour
strolling up here with the County spread out below.
Walking alone just wasn't the same. I was impatient
now for the week to pass so the Spook and I could set
off for Jack's farm. I was really looking forward to seeing
Mam and finding out what she wanted from me.