Spook’s: Dark Assassin (The Starblade Chronicles)

by Joseph Delaney

  After a while I climbed the steps that led up from the subterranean part of the tower to the corridor. I walked along it to the room where we had eaten and beyond that to the outer doorway through which we had first entered.

  I opened the door and looked out. It was still night, and a half-moon hung close to the horizon. By its light I could see the hills and woods of Cymru and the ruined chapel; in the distance lay the sea. The scene looked exactly as I remembered it. I felt sure that we’d returned to our own time.

  The image of Lukrasta’s fingers against Alice’s throat kept replaying in my mind. Would I ever see her again? I wondered desperately. Now, it seemed, I would be travelling back to Chipenden alone.

  When I turned, Grimalkin was standing behind me. There was a strange expression on her face – one that was impossible to read. Alarm filled me. What was wrong?

  ‘Have you found Alice?’ I asked.

  ‘She is still here in the tower. She wants to speak to you. She says it may be for the last time,’ Grimalkin replied.

  My heart thumped painfully at her words. ‘Is she still with Lukrasta?’ I wondered.

  ‘She appeared to be alone. Had I encountered Lukrasta, I would have done my utmost to kill him. Somehow we must put an end to one who would set himself up as a god to rule over others. Climb the inner stairs. Alice is in the room right at the top of the tower – the one with the balcony. But now I must ask you two questions. Firstly, do you love Alice?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I truly love her.’

  Grimalkin nodded. Once again I saw that unreadable expression on her face. ‘Do you trust Alice?’ she asked me next.

  This time I hesitated before replying. Yes, I certainly loved Alice – that was beyond question – but I was not so sure that I fully trusted her. In the past, whenever she’d deceived me, it had been with good reason. Even the first time she’d gone off with Lukrasta, it had been beyond her control: Pan had demanded it. But the years I’d spent close to Alice had left me with a sense of unease.

  ‘You are hesitant,’ said Grimalkin. ‘Think it over and make up your mind in your own good time. But I will give you one piece of advice: without trust, love cannot endure.’

  ‘What will you do, now that Talkus has been destroyed?’ I asked.

  ‘I think that now the Kobalos will retreat back to their city of Valkarky but I will hound them all the way. I will also do what I can for the human women they hold as slaves. My work is not yet done.’

  With those words she shifted back into a silver orb and floated away through the wall.

  Thinking about what she’d said, I walked to the end of the corridor and began to climb the steps which led to the top of Lukrasta’s tower. The door stood open, and I saw Alice waiting inside, standing at the foot of the bed she’d once shared with Lukrasta.

  She smiled at me. ‘Talkus is no more, so it’ll mean the end of the war against the Kobalos, Tom,’ she said. ‘Their mages will have lost their power, they will.’

  ‘Where is Lukrasta?’ I demanded. ‘We can’t allow him to live. We’ve seen what he plans: he’ll become a tyrannical god if he is allowed to. He’s a threat to the County and the whole world beyond.’

  ‘Killing Lukrasta ain’t going to be easy,’ Alice said. ‘Lend me the sword. Let me do it.’

  I stared at her in astonishment. If I gave her the Starblade, I’d be completely helpless against Lukrasta’s magic.

  I shook my head. ‘I can kill Lukrasta myself. I’ve already bested him in combat and I can do it again.’

  ‘Can’t kill him if you can’t find him, Tom. Ain’t going to show his face while you have that sword, is he? But give it to me and he’ll be here quick as a flash.’

  Grimalkin’s question came back to me: did I truly have faith in Alice?

  ‘What’s wrong, Tom? Don’t you trust me?’ she asked, as if reading my thoughts.

  The witch assassin had been right – for how could I claim to love Alice if I didn’t trust her?

  I drew the Starblade from my shoulder scabbard and held it out, hilt first. She took it with a smile, then stepped three paces backwards, away from the bed.

  Instantly Lukrasta appeared in the room, a satisfied expression on his face.

  My heart sank into my boots.

  ‘What a fool you are, boy, to trust a witch like Alice!’ the mage cried, moving to her side and placing his right arm around her. ‘Alice and I are closer than you could ever imagine. As a mage and a witch, we belong together. You can’t conceive of such a bond. She’s deprived you of that weapon, as I instructed. Now she will slay you with your own sword.’

  Alice was staring at me intently, her eyes filled with anything but love.

  ‘Now you know the truth about Alice!’ Lukrasta gloated. ‘She is totally ruthless. She will do anything to protect herself. That always comes first. After that she will protect those she loves!’

  He was right. I had been a fool. My master had also been right when he’d warned me never to trust a girl with pointy shoes; never to trust a witch. I should have listened to him. But I put those thoughts aside. I knew that everything was over for me, but somehow, even though things seemed hopeless, I couldn’t give up. The training I’d received from John Gregory, my experiences as an apprentice and then a spook, had taught me that while there was breath there was hope. Things could change at the very last moment.

  I tried to take a step towards Lukrasta, but my feet wouldn’t move. He was holding me in thrall – immobilizing me with his dark power. I fought against it – after all, I was a seventh son of a seventh son. But it was no good. Bringing all my will to bear, I still couldn’t move.

  ‘Kill him, Alice! Slay him with his sword!’ Lukrasta commanded. ‘Do it now!’

  Grim-faced, she stepped into the space between the mage and me and pointed the sword at my throat.

  I couldn’t believe it. In desperation, I tried to use the gift that had saved me so often before: controlling the passage of time. However, I knew that my power had waned – though I saw Alice’s eyes widen as she sensed me attempting to use it against her.

  Immediately her face twisted in fury and she pulled the Starblade up and away from my throat, coiling like a spring, holding the sword high, as if about to cut my head from my body.

  But I didn’t close my eyes. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing my fear: I locked my gaze with hers.

  Then she uncoiled and the blade whistled downwards through the air, heading for my neck … but at the very last moment she took a step to the left.

  The sword missed my throat by a whisker; I felt the cool air of its passing.

  It did not miss the throat of Lukrasta.

  The Starblade sliced his head clean from his body.

  ‘You thought I was going to kill you, Tom, didn’t you?’

  I nodded. I was still in shock, my whole body trembling. A tide of crimson blood crept across the floor towards us. Alice was holding the sword, but now it was pointing downwards.

  ‘It was the only way to be sure of killing him. You do see that, don’t you, Tom? He wouldn’t have shown his face while you had the sword. He was the fool to trust me, so confident that he held me in thrall. I told him I’d get the sword and then kill you. He believed me.’

  ‘That look in your eyes …’ I began, shuddering at the memory. ‘You really looked like you hated me and intended to kill me.’

  I stared at her. Even now there was something terrifying about her – and it wasn’t just because she was still holding the Starblade with which she had slain Lukrasta.

  ‘Had to be convincing,’ Alice told me. ‘Had to make him believe, didn’t I? But you didn’t trust me, Tom. You didn’t believe in the love we share. So you can go back to Chipenden alone.’

  Her words hurt me, but I couldn’t deny that I’d had a moment of doubt about her. She was right. I hadn’t fully trusted her.

  Then, all at once, I was distracted by the Starblade. Alice was staring at it too. She lifted i
t up, balancing the blade between her hands, frowning.

  Something was happening to it. I saw that it was twisting, cracking, breaking apart, rust flaking off. Then, before my eyes, it was reduced to dust that trickled through Alice’s fingers.

  The Starblade was gone.

  ‘Did you do that with your magic, Alice?’ I asked bitterly.

  ‘There you go, blaming me again, Tom! Why would I want to destroy it?’ she retorted.

  ‘Grimalkin said it was indestructible. That it would grow stronger.’

  ‘Who knows what’s happened, Tom, but it was certainly none of my doing. Maybe its job is done now that the threat from the Kobalos is over. Maybe it was destroyed because it came into contact with Lukrasta’s blood. He was the most powerful human mage who ever walked the Earth. Could be that’s the price for killing him – the end of the Starblade. Who knows?’

  I bowed my head and stared at the floor. The pool of blood was now just inches from Alice’s pointy shoes. I’d been wrong to jump to conclusions; wrong to blame her again. But before I could apologize, she spoke again.

  ‘I ain’t coming back to Chipenden with you, Tom. Need to think things through, I do. Not sure if we can be together any more.’

  CHAPTER 31

  A PRICE TO BE PAID

  THOMAS WARD

  I TRAVELLED BACK to Chipenden slowly and sadly. I had a lot to think about.

  I had never felt more alone. First I’d lost Jenny, and now I’d lost Alice. The house at Chipenden threatened to be a very lonely place.

  On the first evening of my journey, just as the sun was going down, I took Jenny’s notebook out of my bag and started to read through it.

  Much of it was as I expected – jottings on creatures of the dark and accounts of her experiences and training. They differed from my own notes only in that they were more detailed and descriptive and her handwriting was much neater. But one passage caught my eye. It was quite recent, written since our return to the County from Polyznia.

  It’s good to be home again. The longer I stay at Tom’s Chipenden house, the more I grow to love it. I like the garden, even the parts where we bind boggarts and witches. Dealing with them is all part of the job – I’m determined to get used to all aspects of the dark and become brave and strong. I intend to become a good apprentice and then, one day, an even better spook. This is what I was born for. My life only began the day I was apprenticed to Tom Ward.

  That last line brought tears to my eyes. All Jenny’s efforts, all the training I’d given her, had just taken her step by step towards her own death.

  I could console myself with only one thing: Jenny had been happy during her apprenticeship. I was going to miss her companionship – even the cheeky attitude that kept me on my toes.

  It was hard to be a spook. It was a dangerous and lonely job. But one of the hardest things of all, I realized now, was training an apprentice, only to have that life snuffed out. Over a third of my master’s apprentices had died during their training, so this was almost certain to happen to me again. It was a sobering and distressing thought.

  Jenny had been brave and talented, and I certainly didn’t regret taking her on. If the opportunity arose, I would certainly take on another girl.

  In any case, I would need to find a new apprentice soon. The house up on Anglezarke Moor and the mill on the canal now both lacked spooks. From now on I would be obliged to cover those extra territories.

  If anything should happen to me – what then? Who would keep the County safe from the dark?

  I needed to train those who would succeed me.

  On the outskirts of Chester I rested for a couple of days, buying food from a talkative farmer and sleeping in his barn. He had news of the war. The town was buzzing with excitement, for the dark army of the Kobalos was no longer camped on the far coast of the Northern Sea.

  They were falling back, long columns of warriors wending their way north, retreating towards Valkarky. Our own troops were also standing down from their state of high alert. The local regiment had returned to Chester.

  It was commonly believed that our enemies had overextended themselves; that their supply lines were too long to sustain that vast army.

  But I knew better. The truth was that the destruction of their god, Talkus, and the deaths of many of their ruling mages had undermined their will to wage war. As far as I knew, Balkai still lived, but whether or not the more benign factions within Kobalos society managed to form a stable and peaceable regime in the future remained to be seen. There would probably always be conflict between humans and Kobalos, but that dark dream of world domination was over.

  The danger had receded.

  The County was safe.

  I continued north at a leisurely pace.

  It was a long time since I’d last washed – I was caked in dirt and my clothes and body stank. So when I spotted a small lake amidst a copse of trees, I was tempted to bathe.

  Though it was almost noon and there was a pleasant warmth from the sun, a lake like that would always be chilly, even at the height of summer. So I nearly kept going – but then I found myself tugging off my boots and socks.

  First I washed my socks. I didn’t bother with my gown – that could wait until I got back to Chipenden – but I did my best with my breeches and shirt; I wrung out the water, laid them out to dry on the bank, and then, after taking a deep breath, plunged into the lake.

  It was icy – even colder than I’d expected. It sucked the breath out of my body and almost stopped my heart. I didn’t stay in for more than a minute.

  When I emerged naked onto the bank, dripping with water, four armed Kobalos warriors were waiting for me. One had a shaven face, marking him as a mage; another had the three pigtails that told me he was a Shaiksa assassin.

  My first thought was to summon Kratch, but I was at least three miles from the nearest ley line.

  I didn’t need to ask the name of the mage, but he told me anyway, looking me up and down contemptuously as he did so. ‘I find it hard to believe that a little human like you has caused so much trouble and inflicted so much death upon my people. My name is Balkai and there is a price to be paid for what you have done. We will extract it slowly and painfully.’

  I suddenly realized that I’d become complacent, thinking that the threat from the Kobalos was over, assuming that because they’d lost their god and many of their mages, and were now retreating north, they would seek no retribution.

  I’d been so focused on my rift with Alice that I hadn’t given much thought to Balkai, the mage who had probably created the two tulpas.

  But he had given a lot of thought to me.

  He wanted revenge.

  And I had no Starblade to protect me against his magic.

  The two warriors had quickly moved behind me, and before I could speak, one of them delivered a punch to my kidneys with his mailed fist. I dropped to my knees in agony. Perhaps I lost consciousness for a moment, but then I felt myself being dragged across the ground; my limbs felt weak and I was unable to move.

  I heard the voice of Balkai again. ‘Dig it there!’ he commanded, pointing to a spot a little way off.

  I was lying motionless on my back, in thrall to his dark magic. The mage and the Shaiksa assassin stared down at me with pitiless faces.

  ‘They are digging your grave,’ the assassin said, gloating.

  ‘Do you know what the word therskold means?’ Balkai demanded.

  I remembered that it appeared in the glossary written by Nicholas Browne, but I couldn’t have told him that even if I’d wanted to. I could hardly breathe, let alone speak.

  ‘It is our name for a threshold upon which a word of interdiction or harming has been laid. Sometimes it simply guards a doorway, preventing access. In this case I have used it to seal this whole area, preventing anyone from entering or even detecting our presence. So do not expect to be rescued. Even the ravens who watch from the dark will not be able to find you. Nobody will intervene. We have all the tim
e in the world in which to punish you.’

  I had no doubt that what Balkai said was true, yet I still hoped. Help might come from two directions; I had two chances of escaping with my life. I thought of Grimalkin who would be busy hounding the retreating Kobalos army. I felt sure that if she knew of my plight she would take time from that to help me. However, I recalled that she could only visit the Earth during the hours of darkness. The sun was still high in the sky; I could not expect her to appear before dusk.

  Then I thought of Alice. Surely, despite our recent differences, she would try to help if she knew of my dire situation. Her magic was strong. She might be able to probe beyond the therskold and see what was happening to me … It was a hope that I clung to.

  Suddenly I found myself being dragged by my feet towards the hole that had been prepared for me, my head bumping along the ground. They flung me in. Deep in my grave, I was still unable to move and it was still an effort to draw breath. Nevertheless, the Kobalos seemed to be taking no chances. Pegs were driven deep into the earth, and I was bound tightly by my wrists and ankles. Then they left me.

  The sun was lower in the sky now and I could no longer see my enemies – only the edges of the open grave and the sky above me. That might be the last sky I ever saw. I could see and smell smoke too. Nearby the Kobalos had made a fire. The wood crackled as it burned.

  Soon the mage and the Shaiksa reappeared and climbed down into the grave. The two warriors remained above, glaring at me. I saw that the assassin was holding what looked like a spear with a red tip, but I was finding it hard to focus.

  All at once I realized that it was a thin stake with a smouldering point. The Shaiksa thrust it against my stomach, keeping up a steady, agonizing pressure, twisting it into my flesh. I tried not to cry out, but the pain was terrible and I couldn’t help letting out a shrill scream.

  The Shaiksa leaned on the stake with all his weight and I felt it pass straight through my body. He was making me suffer for as long as he possibly could. Then I lost consciousness.