Shadow Spell (14 page)

‘Azork's spell was really very brave,'
said the voice in her head, sounding almost dreamy as it watched the rippling horizon with her. ‘
Sorcerers can't break their contact with the Land. If they do, then they become a thing of the air, a wind spirit. They have a choice, either they can spend eternity driven by the gale, or they can become a tombfolk, a creature of darkness and death that feeds on the lives of others. It's the oldest, most basic power. Clothed in the Armour of Dread, we used to call it, when a spell depended on sheer blood-deep terror to keep it alive.'

Hilary watched as the ripples drew closer. She could see them now, their lovely forms almost part of the night air as they swooped low. Something tugged at her hands and the ropes began to loosen.

‘Gik rikik,' whispered a voice in her ear.

‘I'm ready,' she said, as the tombfolk circled down
towards her, their night-filled eyes glowing with hunger, their graceful vapour forms billowing on the air. There was a female in the lead and she was so heartachingly lovely, with her silver hair floating around her and her moonlight skin, that Hilary stared with humble amazement.

‘GETTEM!' howled Rainbow.

Hilary screamed as the tombfolk exploded in blue and silver flames so bright she had to shut her eyes or lose her sight forever. The bogeymen blew their firebreath in sequence, so that there was always one of them breathing fire out while the others breathed air in. Screams that were more rage than fear or pain, echoed through the night, blending with the crackle of wood as the nearby trees caught fire. Doubled-up with her arms around her head, she felt Jik next to her, shielding her from any flames that came her way.

At last it was over. Nervously, Hilary opened her eyes, feeling sick and with her breath rattling harshly in her lungs. The fire and light were gone and the air was filled with smoke spiralling up from the tree stumps.

In front of her, the bogeymen stared around anxiously. Skerridge inched closer to Hilary, ready to grab her and run when he got the chance. There was a moment of silence and then …

‘Were you looking for me?'

Azork, Daemon of the Night, King of the Tombfolk and once a sorcerer, stepped out of the darkness. His tall figure was dressed in close-fitting purple studded all over
with tiny diamonds like stars in a night sky. His skin was ebony, his eyes were silver whirlpools and dread clung to him like a living shadow.

Skerridge's heart sank. Things had gone horribly wrong. The tombfolk King should have been at the centre of the hive. He should have been so much scorched air by now. But clearly Azork had worked out that Strood was after him and that it would be much more sensible to keep a little way back from the hive. So now, instead of being vaporised as per Strood's instructions, he was here in front of them, standing on the ground and indestructible.

The night air shimmered and other tombfolk stepped forward out of the darkness, tombfolk who had stayed behind with their leader. Skerridge's heart sank even further as he realised that there must be at least half the hive left. Suddenly, things had gone from horribly wrong to almost unimaginably terrible. In fact, things were so completely awful that he came over quite wobbly with fear.

On the ground, the tombfolk moved with the easy grace of a panther, swift and sure towards the kill, and their beauty was almost as frightening as the hungry look in their eyes. For a moment, even the bogeymen were paralysed with fear, and a moment was all it took for the tombfolk to form a circle, a wall of death to enclose their prey.

‘Don't bother with superspeed,' said Azork gently. ‘You'll only run up against us. And if we catch hold of
you, don't bother struggling, because we are far, far stronger than any mere bogeyman and will rip you limb from limb.'

Huddled next to Jik, Hilary was pulling off the last of her bonds. She had a distant look on her face as she listened to Senta's spell, whispering urgently in her head, telling her anything it could remember about Azork. Anything that might help her survive. In the middle of the vampire circle, the three bogeymen huddled together, looking miserable.

The tombfolk King curled his lip. ‘Call yourselves Dread,' he hissed. ‘I'll show you
Dread
.'

Slowly, the tombfolk moved forward, shrinking the circle. Skerridge looked around the ring of star-filled or moonlight eyes, of tall strong bodies all the colours of night-time and darkness. They looked so hungry, but then they always were. However much life they had to drink, it was never enough. And the power that drives the living – that keeps hearts beating, bodies warm and brains ticking over – is in the blood.

Azork raised his hand towards Rainbow's ugly face and the bogeyman howled. His eyes bulged and a scarlet haze began to drift from them, twisting in the smoky air as thousands of tiny droplets of blood were drawn out of the bogeyman's body and towards the King. Like iron filings to a magnet. The other tombfolk followed their leader and the meal began.

Almost at once, Skerridge felt his eyeballs begin to swell and suddenly his limbs felt like what they were,
lumps of useless meat and bone. All the power, all
the life
, was running out of them, surging up the complex net of his veins to boil out through his eyes and skin like fine, hot tears.

One of the tombfolk women laughed. A light laugh, pleased. People, Quick or Fabulous, are never as fully alive as when they are fighting not to die, and so blood was all the more flavoursome if it was torn out slowly and painfully.

‘Azork,' said a voice so soft it was amazing that anyone could hear it over all the racket.

And suddenly, everything stopped.

In a heap on the ground, three pairs of bogeyman eyes opened cautiously. The tombfolk were still there, but now their attention was focused on Hilary. She was untied and standing, tall and straight in spite of the haze of blood that had risen to her face and arms, her blue eyes fixed on the night-filled ones of the tombfolk King.

A faint tremor ran through Azork's elegant frame. For a moment the air shimmered as if the world had been shaken.

At the same time, a small gap opened in the ring of tombfolk bodies. There was an outbreak of nudging from the three bogeymen. Smeared all over in their own blood and feeling horribly weak but more hopeful, they shuffled back on to their feet. Bogeymen were good at small gaps. One of them inched slightly left.

Hilary smiled at Azork while inside the circle two bogeymen watched unblinkingly. Polpp took a small
step towards the gap.

‘Remember me?' said Hilary.

Seeing the look on the King's face, the last remaining bogeyman in the circle swallowed nervously and straightened his waistcoat.

‘It was Senta I loved,' whispered Azork, his words hanging on the air like frosty breath. ‘
You
are not
her
.'

He raised his hand to continue draining Hilary's blood, to suck every last drop of it out through her delicate skin and leave nothing but a useless lump of flesh. Only then, for just a moment, he hesitated.

Everything went mad.

Skerridge shot into action, grabbed Hilary and kept going while she yelled ‘Let me go!' in his ear as he barged through the startled tombfolk. Jik did an amazing somersault and dived head first back into the Land, burrowing away in the same direction. With screams of rage, the hive launched themselves into the air to give chase to their prey, which was now escaping all over the place, in every direction.

‘STOP, FOOLS!' snarled Azork.

For the second time that night the sky filled with blue fire. It surged around the King and the six of his hive still on the ground with him, outlining them in brilliance, reflecting in their star-filled eyes as all the other tombfolk burned.

At last, left on the hillside, Azork stood gazing into the sky. The blue fire had burned out, but its trace could still be seen as a silvery stain in the air that hung about the
remaining members of the hive like a halo. There were now only seven tombfolk left in the whole of the Drift. It was a sad echo of the Seven Sorcerers, and Azork smiled bitterly.

He looked down at his hands. Was he imagining it or were they fainter than before, less
there
? He knew one thing, he felt different. He felt
wrong
.

‘What is it?' asked a female with star-laced hair that floated behind her, even though the air was still.

Azork didn't answer, though he had already realised what was happening to him. For a moment, seeing Hilary standing there, he had been surprised into remembering Senta. He had loved her with all his heart, though she had never cared for him. And in that moment, all the pain of unreturned love had swept over him just as strong as when he had been alive and a sorcerer.

As part of his spell to cheat the plague, Azork had clothed himself in the Armour of Dread, but Dread Fabulous weren't supposed to feel the way that Senta made him feel. And so if the Daemon of the Night
did
feel like that then he couldn't be Dread, and without Dread he was nothing. Already, he could feel cracks in his armour. His spell was breaking.

He drew himself up to his full height and focused on the horizon. There was time yet before he died, time in which he could have some measure of revenge on Strood for the death of his hive, for sending the bogeymen and bringing all this about. He smiled.
Perhaps in doing so he might even be able to repair the damage that had been done and save himself.

Azork started to walk and the rest of the hive fell into step beside him. It might be slow compared to flying, but flying was too dangerous – there were other bogeymen.

‘Where are we going?' the female asked.

‘We are going to a place where we can feed,' Azork said, his voice soft as a night breeze.

‘Yes!' The female laughed softly, understanding in her eyes.

The King smiled coldly and his whirlpool eyes glowed as he walked on. ‘We are going to Hilfian.'

The Sunatorium was quiet now, save for the soft rustle of growing crowsmorte. Through the crystal walls the moon shone, casting its silver light over the carpet of flowers that blanketed the woodland. Strood steepled his fingers thoughtfully.

He wasn't daft. He knew the sorcerers all right, after all he had been there and understood that finishing them off altogether wasn't going to be simple. He suspected that the BMs hadn't been totally successful in their efforts at wiping the once-sorcerers out. But the point was that they would be hanging on only by the barest thread, and that was enough for now. On top of that his army would be leaving in the morning and they would sweep across the Drift like a tide of golden darkness, wreaking horrible death on any Quick they found. Hopefully, that would include most of the Redstone kid's friends. And possibly the girl herself, though he would prefer to get her alive.

Strood smiled grimly, his quartz eye glittering in the cold moonlight. He had everything covered. Except …

Except Ninevah Redstone's luck.

And even there …

Strood reached out and rang the small bell perched on the table beside him. The silver sound woke Jibbit at once. He had been retrieved from the garden by Dunvice and had been trying to get a little sleep after the trauma of the day, using the net of crowsmorte that spanned the gaps between trees as a roost. He peered down at the scene below.

Almost instantly a servant scurried into view and bobbed a curtsey.

‘Ah, now, my dear, what is your name?'

‘S-Samfy, s-sir.'

‘Still alive, eh? Well done.'

Samfy bobbed another curtsey.

‘Now, I want you to fetch me a few things …'

Generally speaking, Strood didn't use Land Magic. He didn't need mudmen or bouldermen to fetch and carry, or mist dogs to track things down or silt cats to guard, because he had servants and goblin-Grimm to obey his every command. He didn't even need fire-monkeys to wreak havoc on his enemies, he had bogeymen for that. Besides, he thought Land Magic was a little old-hat and much preferred the more creative methods of distillation.

But right now, because of Ninevah Redstone, he was about to break the rule of a lifetime.

Strood was going to make a skinkin.

It took a couple of hours for the servants to find and
prepare everything that he needed, and by the time Strood was ready to start it was almost Dead of Night, the point in any night-time that is the furthest away from both sunset and dawn. This was the only time that someone could make a thing so dark and nasty as the skinkin.

‘Did you know,' he said cheerfully, as he examined the items brought in by Samfy and laid out on the table, ‘the Dead of Night lasts a lifetime and yet is over in a matter of seconds. During it, the world is ruled by hopelessness and Quick hearts are at their most vulnerable. It's the time that many people die, the time that others lie awake fearful and alone, ripe for despair to chill their blood and stop their hearts.'

‘Why aren't lots more Quick dead then?' asked Jibbit, creeping closer down the netting as curiosity got the better of him.

Strood chuckled. ‘Good question. Fortunately, most Quick sleep through it or the world would be an emptier place. And stopped hearts can start again.'

‘Fortunate indeed!' mumbled Scribbins, writing ‘despair' in his notebook and underlining it. He was wearing a crumpled suit that looked as if it had been slept in (which it had), his eyes were red-rimmed and he trembled constantly.

Mrs Dunvice said nothing, but watched Strood closely. She had cast off the housekeeper's dress and pinafore, changing them for tough armour of beaten leather, along with some solid spiked boots. Her hair had been
cut to a skull cap of iron grey. She would have been pleased to know that she looked more like her werewolf mother than she ever had before. Needless to say, she looked absolutely nothing like her very dead Quick father. Not that she ever knew him. He hadn't lived long enough to see her born.