Shadow Spell (12 page)

For answer it dumped her on the ground in the middle of a land so ravaged it was unrecognisable. Then it drew back and hovered, a thick shroud of darkness behind her, waiting for her to work it out.

Around them, columns of smoke rose, spiralling upwards to join the pall that blotted out the sky. It made Nin's eyes smart and the bitter smell caught at the back of her throat. Under her feet, the ground was blackened, crumbling into ash as she moved. And everywhere were the ruined, smouldering stumps of trees.

‘A burned forest,' she said through her coughing, ‘you want me to know about a burned forest?'

As she spoke her eye was caught by a charred stump in front of her, its blackened remains jutting towards the sky.

She stared at it, fear forming in her heart, making her move forward to take a closer look. There were the last traces of words carved into the wood. She could just make out a couple of letters. They were:

‘Nemus!' she cried. When she and Jonas had travelled this way before, the shelter offered by Sturdy's oak had kept them safe them from the Savage Forest and all its nightmares. And now, Nemus Sturdy, oldest and most powerful of the once-sorcerers, was gone.

‘Got it now, have we?' sneered the Darkness. ‘Worked out where we are at last?'

‘This is the Savage Forest! But how .. ?' She stared around, bewildered.

‘Strood's bogeymen burned it down. Every tree and flower. Every blade of grass. All gone, just to kill the once-sorcerer who turned himself into an oak. I saw it, the bears and the wolves running for their beast lives, eyes full of panic. And the birds, their great black wings flapping so hard they raised a wind, a whole army of them rising into the night sky. And then there was the oak. When it burned, a golden light came off it like steam. This is what I want you to know.'

Hot tears began to flood Nin's cheeks. A sob shook her.

‘Poor thing,' it snarled. ‘Poor little living legend.'

‘Why are you being so cruel! What did I do? You said it was the bogeymen.'

‘But they did it because of YOU. Precious little Ninevah Redstone. She Who Cannot Fail. Lucky Ninevah who skips through danger like it was a picnic while those around her bleed and burn.'

‘You're the Dark Thing, aren't you?' cried Nin, suddenly understanding. ‘The Dark Thing That Lives In The Wood?'

‘Lived!' it spat. ‘I think you'll find it's
lived
in the wood.'

‘I'm sorry!'

‘No use being sorry now, is it?' The Dark Thing surged forward, thickening around her, its voice was right in her ear, right in her head.

‘I left you alive for a reason. Because even if you started this, I think you earned your legend. And because you are who you are, you may be the only one who can save the Drift.'

‘What can I do!'

‘Don't ask me! Aren't you supposed to be finding Simeon Dark? If he isn't dead of the plague and no one has noticed yet.'

The Dark Thing hissed at her making her flinch and cry out. ‘Now there is no more wood, I am free to travel the Drift. So know this, if you don't succeed then I'll come looking for you wherever you are. And next time I'll drop you from so high it'll take you a day to hit the ground. And I really,
really
won't catch you.'

And then it was gone and Nin was alone in the ruined forest.

Nin had never felt so alone, so lost or so scared. She wished desperately for Jonas, but Dark had built his Mansion far south-west of the Savage Forest and Jonas had a long journey before he could be with her again. Even if he worked out where she was.

And what of her other friends? Jik had always been able to find her in the past, but she hadn't seen him since he had been lying on the beach after their escape from the Terrible House, almost melted away, his red fire eyes dimmer than they had ever been. She had no idea where Taggit was and as to Skerridge, well, he was a bogeyman and although he had helped her once, BMs weren't known for their kindly natures. And Enid Lockheart was dying. And Nemus Sturdy was dead.

Sobs shook her. She didn't want to think about the part where it was all her fault – where all this had happened because of her – it hurt too much.

A feathery touch brushed her foot and she raised her head. Something was creeping over her ankles, treading softly on paws of grey ash. Eyes glowed at her like something smouldering in the depths of a banked-down fire. She drew her feet back, fear making her skin prickle. The creature looked like a small stoat made from the ashy remains of the forest and she could feel the heat of the thing even through her boots. It hissed at her, a spark kindling in the depths of its ember eyes, as though it might ignite at any moment.

Glancing around, Nin saw that night was settling in and the ruined forest was wrapped in darkness. There was a faint glow coming from around her forearm where the spell had settled, its shadowy colours giving off a gleam like moonlight. She could hear it whispering softly, but couldn't make out any words. Overhead, lingering smoke hung in great clouds, hiding the stars.

It wasn't good. Even with the birds and bears and wolves gone, even as devastated as it was, Nin had a bad feeling that the Savage Forest was determined not to be friendly. And now there were
two
ash-things, curling around each other, both glaring at her.

She blinked. No, it was three. She hadn't even seen the third arrive; it had just slipped into view from the night shadows. She wondered if her fear was giving them strength to multiply. How afraid was she? One or two of the things she could manage, but what about twenty? A hundred? Panic began to uncurl in her chest. She looked around, but there was nowhere to go. No shelter from the night.

What she needed, what she really
really
needed, was Nemus Sturdy.

Picking up the blackened remains of a long branch, Nin leaned forward to prod the closest of the creatures, trying to push it away. Its hiss was loud enough to make her yelp. Sparks flew from its eyes and the branch she was holding sprang into instant, furious life, the flames leaping inches at a time, racing up the wood towards her hand. Nin screamed and dropped the branch, but a spark
had already jumped to the sleeve of her jacket and caught.

Flames began to spread on her sleeve, forcing the spell to slither rapidly up her arm and around her neck, murmuring anxiously as it went. Wrenching her jacket off, she dropped it to the ground and kicked it away, pulling her rucksack free as she did so. Shaking and gasping, she watched the garment burn as the ash-stoats swarmed over it.

Backing away from the gaggle of spark-filled eyes, Nin found that she was almost standing on the remains of Nemus Sturdy. The ash-stoats watched her, hissing. Their number had grown. Now, there were too many to count.

Nin sank to the ground, huddling closer to the stump that once was Sturdy's Oak. Thinking of him made her feel a little better and she lay for a while, still trembling but somehow comforted, while the ash-stoats seethed beyond the reach of her feet. One or two of them lunged for her, but they always fell back just short of her boots. She wondered why and the answer came quickly.

The Seven Sorcerers' spells depended on Quick dreads and desires for the power to keep their sorcerers hanging on to existence. Nemus Sturdy had made a spell to give Quick shelter from all the dread things that the Savage Forest held at night. His Oak, the centre of his ring of protection, had been burned back to almost nothing, but now Nin was here. Needing his protection desperately.

Maybe even the need of one Quick was enough to save him?

And there was more than that. Nin eyed the ashstoats, thinking over what Enid Lockheart had told her about the nature of spells and how they worked. With the Forest burned, there was not so much of a reason for Quick to need Sturdy's protection. So, if there was not enough danger around, then maybe his spell
was making sure there was more.
Maybe it was taking her fear and turning it into the ash-stoats.

One of the stoats hissed at her and sparks flashed from its body. Nin imagined it growing, getting bigger with the fear from each passing Quick who saw it. Or the bones of its victims. And they would wish Nemus Sturdy was there to protect them. And the more there were, the more the oak would grow.

Always provided the Drift didn't go completely to the Raw before it got the chance. She sighed. It all came back to Strood and what he was doing and whether or not she could stop him.

Her face still wet with tears, Nin put her arms around the foot of the stump, laying her head amid its rough, cindery, still-warm roots, making the most of the little protection that still remained. And after a while, she fell asleep.

Not far away but in a whole different world, Hilary Jones was reaching the end of the worst day of her life. Inside her small flat in the Widdern, unaware that two sets of fiery red eyes were watching over her (three sets if you counted Strood's assassin hiding in the garden under a lilac tree), she was sitting in the dark in front of the TV, watching the late news about Britain's Blowtorch Butchery and crying quietly into a mug of hot milk.

She was crying because earlier today she had been called on to identify three bodies. Well, one body actually, because the others were in too many pieces to be called bodies as such. The whole one had been her sister and had been removed from a car just before dawn as Hilary was coming home from working a night shift at the local hospital, a car that had inexplicably turned itself into a smashed-up wreck without even going off the road.

Hilary shuddered and put down the hot milk – by now getting cold and rather salty – and rubbed her left wrist.
At 4:15:23 that morning, the exact time of her sister's death, a white ring had appeared around Hilary's wrist. It looked just like the trace of an old scar. It also looked just like a mark that her aunt used to have around
her
wrist.

Something has been transferred, Hilary thought fuzzily. Inside her head, pieces clicked together to form a picture. The scar (and whatever went with it) had belonged to her aunt. When her aunt died, it had gone to Hilary's sister, because Hilary's aunt had no children and Hilary's mother was already dead. It had belonged to Hilary's sister for barely two hours and then … then it had come to Hilary.

She felt her skin crawl, suddenly aware of a whispering in her head, like a distant voice calling her.

‘Hiiillary …'

‘I need to sleep,' she told herself firmly. ‘I need to stop thinking about all this for just a little while or I'll go mad with it.'

Leaving the television to babble, because she didn't want to be alone right now, Hilary went to lie down on the bed. She kicked off her shoes, but was too worn out to get undressed and fell asleep the moment her eyes closed.

While she slept, nightmares tumbled about in her head like clothes in a washing machine, mixed up and running into one another as they churned. There were flowers that ate people, a mansion so tall it touched the heavens, houses that burned in towering flames against
a sky of thunderclouds and a beautiful golden-eyed woman surrounded by lightning that danced in the air around her like snakes of fire. Hilary cried out in her sleep when she saw that the woman's left hand was just a stump.

‘Hiillary!'

The woman leaned forward and suddenly she was close, eye to eye with Hilary, her face filled with something dark and powerful. From nowhere, a name arrived in Hilary's head. Senta Melana.

‘
The spell, Hilary,'
Senta whispered, and even though Hilary knew she was dreaming, the woman's voice was real. ‘
The spell will keep you alive. It can't offer you magical power, but it has knowledge that will help you survive. And it WILL help you, because you are the last, and you must live. For all the lives to come. For me.'

Hilary sprang awake with a gasp. The bedroom was silent and dark but she knew, she just
knew
that whatever had killed the rest of her family was here,
in the flat with her
.

‘Go,'
said the soft voice in her head. Only now it was no longer just whispering but clear as a bell. ‘
GO NOW!
'

Barefoot, Hilary crept silently to the bedroom door and peered through. The hallway was empty. Nothing stirred. Through the half-open door to the sitting room she could see the flicker of a late-night game show on the television. And then, down the hall, in between her and the front door, she heard a noise. The fridge door opened and there was a sound of rustling. Hilary raised
her eyebrows in amazement. Her assassin was stopping for a snack before he got on with the job!

Swiftly, she slipped around the bedroom door, crossed the hallway and went into the living room, thankful that the chattering TV would cover any small sounds. She picked up her car keys and headed back into the hall. The kitchen was silent. Alarm bells rang in her head and she looked up and down the hall. There was nothing there.