by Caro King
‘Oy!’ yelled Skerridge indignantly, more with fury than anything else. Yet.
Chaos descended as everything happened at once.
Strood sprang towards Nin, his blue-black fingers reaching to touch her face, but she was already on the move. She scrambled backwards out of his way, then ducked under his outstretched arms and ran.
As she moved, she saw Jonas and Jik rushing to help her. Taggit, Floyd and Stanley had leapt in to free Skerridge from the crowsmorte, and all four of them collapsed in a tussle of bodies and roots and rapidly blooming flowers.
Strood spun to catch her, but Nin darted left and kept going, hurtling around the inside rim of the Dancing Circle. Strood followed, inches behind her and laughing excitedly. Jonas sprang at Strood, who dodged out of his way then dived around Jik, leaving the mudman spinning.
Nin tore past the heaving mass of Fabulous, Grimm and madly growing crowsmorte. She heard Skerridge yell something that might have been ‘Stop it! Stop growing in my ‘ead ya blasted, blimmin’ POPPY!’ followed by a lot of strangled gasping from Stanley and bellows of fury from Taggit. A boot flew past followed by a shower of crowsmorte petals and a dented helmet. The helmet hit Jonas, who staggered and fell. Jik, diving to tackle Strood, ikked wildly as a tentacle of crowsmorte lashed around him, dragging him to the ground and bumping him over the grass before, not finding any flesh or blood to eat, it let go.
Nin ran on. She didn’t go outside the ring of trees, partly because she didn’t want to leave the others, and partly because she hadn’t yet given up on Simeon Dark. She was easily keeping ahead of Strood and knew that as soon as they could, Jonas and Jik would grab him. So she kept going, starting her second lap of the Dancing Circle.
The sky was still inky and the chill cast over the land by the Maug flock, flying high above their heads, was getting into her bones. She heard Jonas shout and saw him spring back on to his feet. Jik was already up and running towards Strood.
Good, she thought with a surge of relief, they’ll get him any second.
And then her foot hit a stone and her ankle wrenched, throwing her backwards against a tree. For a moment she faced Strood, eyeball to glittering eyeball.
Arafin Strood smiled indulgently. ‘That was fun,’ he said. ‘Haven’t played chase in years. Quite a day this is turning out to be.’
He reached out with his blackened fingers and gently touched her forehead.
‘Ow,’ said Nin, clapping a hand to her head. She glared at Strood.
Triumphant howls and shouts along with some major ripping sounds came from the other side of the clearing. Breathless, Jonas arrived at her side. There was a cut on his head and blood smeared on his cheekbone. He was about to take Nin’s arm when Jik leapt in and shoved him away.
‘Ik!’
‘Don’ touch ‘er!’ yelled Skerridge, appearing next to Jik.
There was a crowsmorte bloom growing out of the bogeyman’s ear, but otherwise the stuff had been stamped into oblivion. The others staggered up, clothes torn and eyes wild. They all stood there, staring at Nin and Strood and slowly registering that it was too late.
Nin stepped away from Jonas, her face pale and her breath coming in short gasps. Her blue eyes fixed his grey ones with a steady gaze.
‘They’re right, Jonas. He’s done something, don’t you see?’
She could feel it already, spreading over her forehead. The skin was tight, swollen and itchy, hot with something bad. She put a hand up and it came away with yellow pus spilling over her palm. Even as she looked, her fingers began to swell and darken.
Strood stood, quietly watching Nin’s face as the lumpy boils spread.
‘I’ve killed you,’ he said softly, ‘that’s what I’ve done. Given you faerie pox. And if you touch your friend here, even for a final goodbye, then he’ll die too. Painfully. Like you.’
‘Take it back,’ snarled Jonas, his eyes lighting with fury.
‘Or what? You’ll kill me?’ Strood chuckled. ‘Come now, boy, we both know there is nothing you can do.’
Jik stepped forward and pushed a mud-made hand into Nin’s. The disease was spreading backwards across her scalp, and forwards down her cheekbones. And up her wrists to her arms too, making the spell shift about uncomfortably, its colours turning to a dark grey touched with crimson. She coughed and something spattered on to her raised hand. The disease was inside her now, clogging her lungs and pushing up under her skin. Her whole body felt stretched. It was uncomfortable, but she knew that uncomfortable was just the beginning. Strood was about to win, unless she did something fast.
‘We know that Dark’s already here.’ Nin swallowed as pain began to blossom somewhere in her middle. ‘We just have to work out who.’
All eyes were on her now, hanging on her words. She wished they wouldn’t. She wished one of them would help her, but it was Nin who had to help them. One of them at least. Dark. Suddenly, while her body fell apart, somewhere in her head the pieces began to fit together.
‘I think … I think Dark’s spell wants him to be free,’ she said through swollen lips. ‘The spell was made to keep him from death and it disguised him so well that even he doesn’t know who he is. But it’s not working any more, is it? The Land is dying and so will everything in it, however carefully it’s hidden.’
Her tongue was swelling now too, her voice sounded thick and the pain was hot knives in her insides. Jonas stepped towards her and she could see how much he wanted to put his arms round her, try to make it better somehow. She pulled back, shaking her head, hanging on to Jik.
‘What I’m saying is,’ Nin mumbled past her tongue, ‘now, the best way the spell can keep Simeon Dark from death is to break. That way he can come back and save us, save the Drift. But the spell can’t break itself.’ She stopped, struggling for breath. She knew the answer was in reach, but she just couldn’t get it.
‘It can only break when someone tells Dark who he is,’ said Strood cheerfully, ‘so you had better hurry up, girl, hadn’t you! Let’s see, you have around five minutes before you are incapable of speech. Screaming maybe, but not speech. And … say … seven before you are a puddle on the ground. And just remember, Dark’s spell is designed so that nobody can guess it.’
‘Unless,’ said Taggit, suddenly. He looked at Strood, a slow smile crossing his ugly face. ‘Unless they’re someone very lucky who ‘appens t’ be dyin’ of somethin’ only a sorcerer can cure.’
Jonas glanced at Strood and saw that what Taggit said was true. It was written on Strood’s face. Even he wasn’t perfect. Every plan has its flaw and Arafin Strood had just spotted the catch in his.
‘Not quite as I intended things to work out,’ he said. His smile had become brittle and his quartz eye glittered horribly in his pale face. ‘But never mind. What is life without an element of risk?’ He looked at Nin. ‘Come on now, time is running out.’
Watching Nin struggle, Skerridge felt something expand in his middle. Panic. A complicated thought came into his head about this being it. The end. Because if this girl died then it was all over and everything would die, torn apart by the Raw and doomed to become nothing but eternal darkness. Because this girl was the last chance. His last chance. He shook the feeling off and stepped forward to lean over her, his red eyes inches from Nin’s, the crowsmorte bloom bobbing.
Overhead the cloud of Death was nearly gone, darkening the horizon beyond the hill as it swarmed on towards Hilfian. It left a shadowy haze in its wake, but following that was clear sky.
Nin looked up. Behind Skerridge she could see the dark slash that was Strood as he waited for the disease to get her before her luck could tell her what she had to say. She could sense the tension, crackling like fire in the hearts of those watching. It felt as if the focus of the whole world was here, on this stretch of grass, in the centre of this ring of trees. Because what was about to happen here was going to change everything.
‘Come on, kid,’ said Skerridge gently, ‘ya know, doncha?’
O
verhead, the shadows left by the Death Flock began to break up and a shaft of sunlight fell through the trees, bathing Skerridge in light. And suddenly Nin understood what Crow had been trying to say about Dark’s character being the same. Crow hadn’t been talking about Dark as a sorcerer, but Dark as a person. And Dark as a person was a joker who loved disguises and liked to stretch the rules.
It was dead obvious really.
‘BMs don’t go out in the sun,’ she gasped, ‘but you do. You’re not a proper bogeyman, and that’s because you’re not a bogeyman at all. You never were! You’re a sorcerer in disguise.’
Leaving her arm, the shadow spell broke apart, sending its colours flying through the air, swirling around the startled group of watchers.
‘It’s you, Skerridge,’ said Nin. ‘You’re really Simeon Dark!’
36
The Last Sorcerer
Skerridge bounced backwards as the shadow colours gathered into a cloud and surged towards him. They surrounded him, their light filling his eyes with a kaleidoscope of blues and purples, and then were gone. Inside his head, memories began to rearrange themselves, shifting their perspective, details clicking suddenly into place. As they did he realised just how dream-like the old ones, the memories that he had thought were real, actually were. Now he was seeing his past from the right angle and it made everything different.
He gulped. He had been at the Final Gathering all right, but he hadn’t just been watching. He had been part of it. Alongside the other sorcerers he had helped to cast the Deathweave, had persuaded Strood to drink it, had failed to stop Vispilio throwing Strood to the wolves. And then had walked away from the results.
Horror swept through him at the memory and he groaned, shuddering and putting his bony hands over his face. He was part of the creation of Strood and so he was also part of the destruction of everything he had come to care about.
‘It’s all right,’ mumbled Nin gently through her swollen lips.
Skerridge opened his eyes again and grinned a slow, relieved grin as a happier thought arrived. Of course it was all right! It was absolutely, fantastically all right! He could sort it all out now! – a bit late, true, but that was better than never. He was a sorcerer and he could save the world. Not to mention Ninevah Redstone.
He stepped towards her, shaking off the bogeyman shape as he moved, his bony limbs thickening to a sorcerer’s slender figure, the hairiness disappearing, except for that on his head, which turned fair. Lastly, in a single blink, his eyes glowed gold, strangely flecked with silver, and Simeon Dark was back.
Dark leaned towards Nin, smiling. In spite of the row of neat, perfectly formed teeth, the look was pure Skerridge. The crowsmorte bloom had gone from his ear, but he was still wearing his tattered trousers and the worse-for-wear fancy waistcoat. He reached out with one slender hand to touch her forehead. To take back what Strood had given her.
Strood dived, grabbing Dark around the waist and hurling him to the ground a split second before his fingers touched Nin. ‘You won’t win it all, Simeon Dark,’ he hissed. ‘At least I’ll make sure the girl dies.’
The sorcerer vanished from Strood’s grip, then flicked back into view a few feet away. For a moment Dark wondered how he had done it, but then remembered. With magic he could rearrange himself to be pretty much anywhere.
Springing back to his feet, Strood got between the sorcerer and Nin. With a flourish he pulled a sword from a sheath at his belt. Its thin blade shone with a light that made the air around it glitter.
‘Elven silver,’ whispered Taggit. ‘Impervious to magic.’
Those watching edged away, leaving the sorcerer and the immortal facing one another, tensing for the first move. As she staggered against a tree for support, Nin was shocked at how useless her legs felt, like lumps of soaking cotton wool. She sank slowly to the ground, feeling something inside her burst. Jonas crouched beside her, white-faced with fear.
In the middle of the Circle, Dark sighed. As his memory unearthed one inventive spell after another, it left part of him still reeling from shock at this new discovery of himself. On top of that, not one of the spells he was coming up with would put an end to Strood. Only Strood’s Death could do that, and to work out a spell to undo the Deathweave would take time – the one thing they didn’t have.
He shot a glance at Nin. All he needed was a moment to rearrange himself over there and heal her. Perhaps if he got Strood out of the way …
‘Hah!’ he shouted triumphantly, flicking his fingers. Strood vanished. Dark turned towards Nin, flicked out of sight and then materialised again, standing right next to her. At the same time, the air blurred and Strood reappeared in exactly the same spot as Dark. The two of them collided, bouncing back, away from Nin.
‘Forgot the blimmin’ boots,’ muttered Dark.
Strood grinned a savage grin and whirled the sword, taking a firm stride toward Dark.
Backing away, Dark breathed in deeply. He didn’t need Natural Bogeyman any more to produce a little thing like firebreath. A blast of white-hot flame poured from his mouth, forcing the watchers to scrabble further away. As Nin moved, another split ran down her back and she knew that the end was near. Her insides felt like hot liquid and each breath was a struggle.
Strood burst alight, but stalked on towards Dark anyway, a pillar of fire with an elven sword and the air of something that was never going to stop. A lump of glittery stone dropped out of the flaming mass and rolled away as sorcerer and immortal circled one another.
The flames finished burning anything burnable and went out, leaving soot-stained bones. They were still upright and waving the sword menacingly, though Strood had stopped moving forward. Nin wondered why until she realised that he was waiting for his eyes to grow back so that he could see.
Dark stepped lightly across the clearing. Sensing the movement, Strood turned his head. Already, blood vessels were forming on the bone, flesh was growing. He got a better grip on the sword and began to lurch across the space after Dark, eyeless and earless it didn’t matter. He was coming to kill them anyway.
Nin’s world was growing dark, and the pain settled into one great ball of fire in her chest as her heart got ready to explode. She sagged, and Jik shoved his arms around her chest, holding her up. Jonas turned, wildeyed with fear, looking for the sorcerer.
Dark reached them, leaned forward and pressed a cool hand to Nin’s forehead.
‘There you go,’ he said, ‘all better now.’
Nin gasped as the pain began to recede at once. Behind them, Strood whirled the sword, bringing it down in a blow that should have cut both the sorcerer and Nin in half. Only there was a sizzle of hot air and suddenly Nin’s world became a blur of movement so fast she could feel her molecules spin. Then everything was normal again, except she was on the other side of the clearing, slung over the sorcerer’s shoulder.
‘Was that real superspeed?’ she mumbled, steaming. ‘As opposed to nearly superspeed?’
On the plus side, it had dried out some of the pus and she didn’t appear to be cooked. She saw that already her split skin was healing.
‘With knobs on,’ said Dark proudly, dropping her to the ground. ‘Note that you are not currently a cinder! We sorcerers can do almost anything, you know.’
There was a howl of rage from across the clearing. Strood swung the sword wildly, forcing the others to leap back out of the way. He had eyes now. Two new ones with no trace of quartz. And a few bits of skin.
‘Ahh,’ said Dark, raising an eyebrow. Light flashed from his fingers and suddenly Strood was wearing a smart white suit. Nin was glad. He was healing up pretty fast and things could have turned embarrassing. This time there were no scars and if he hadn’t been an immortal, insane, death-dealing psychopath he might have looked quite nice.
Angry though, definitely angry.
Vision restored, he spun towards Nin, whirled the sword up over his head and threw it. The blade sailed through the air, a shining, silver-white streak hurtling stra
ight for Nin’s heart. She stepped neatly to one side. The sword flew past her and stuck in one of the Dancing Trees, where it quivered, singing quietly.
For only the second time in his long and cruel life, Arafin Strood completely and utterly lost it. He went nova.
‘You,’ he snarled, having just discovered that he now had lips to snarl with, ‘you snivelling, scrawny, insufferable little brat.’ His voice rose to a scream. ‘How dare you challenge me!’
Nin edged towards Dark, feeling hurt by the snivelling comment. She was sure she had only cried when it was really bad. She wasn’t too keen on scrawny either.
Strood pulled himself up to his full height. He was quivering all over with fury, his face twisted up with it, his eyes like chips of black ice.
‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘it ends NOW!’ He flung back his head and screamed. It wasn’t a word, but it still sounded like a command that echoed through the air in spreading ripples until it reached its target.
Back in Hilfian, the Death Flock’s approach to the town had been hidden by the wall of Raw, which blocked people’s view of the horizon. It took them completely by surprise, appearing over the top of the Raw and crashing down on them in a tidal wave of inky black.
Shouts of alarm rose as the air grew cold. Ice ran over puddles and ponds, leaves began to wither on the tallest trees and flowers pulled in their petals sensing night in the middle of the day. The shouts turned to screams as the Death Flock swept over Hilfian, a hundred thousand wings whirring and a hundred thousand beaks open, soundless but letting out a trilling that was made of raw fear. Everywhere, everyone ran.
‘Get to the cellars,’ yelled Hilary above the clamour of frightened voices. ‘We’ll be safe there!’
She darted into the town hall, calling to the patients to move as Maug birds poured into every hut, broken or whole, through every gap and crevice. Their chill put out fires and froze barrels of water and where they found life they swept around it hungrily and then moved on, leaving only husks of flesh and bone.
