Shadow Spell (15 page)

At the table, Strood took up a bundle of slender cat bones, their delicate shafts scraped and washed free of any trace of meat. The bundle included a skull, also scoured to clean bone, its empty sockets staring at nothing. Then he turned to a bowl filled with blood from the freshly topped-up barrel, and a pile of carefully sieved earth. Using the blood to mix the earth into sticky mud, he rolled it and the bones up into a small log shape, the white bone gleaming amid the dark mud. But not much mud, just enough to hold it all together. Then he stuck the skull on top of it and neatly wrapped the whole lot into a tidy bundle using the skin of a hare, and placed it on top of a silver plate on the table.

Jibbit cleared his throat. ‘I thought yoo wanted her alive?'

‘Oh I do.' Strood smiled. ‘I most certainly want the girl alive because then the manner of her end will be in my hands. And I have some very … interesting … ideas about that. So, the skinkin will not be unleashed unless it becomes necessary.'

He nodded towards a cage sitting on the ground, or rather the crowsmorte carpet, to the left of his armchair. It was a fine mesh of silver with a handle on
the top and a detachable bottom, so that it could be lifted, placed over something to confine it, and then lifted off again at the proper time. There were a series of clips that could be snapped shut to fasten the cage to its base. The base, Jibbit realised, was the flat silver plate under the bundle of bones.

‘Dunvice here will keep the thing caged until the moment that she knows all is lost. If that moment should come, which it will not. But then we are talking Ninevah Redstone here.' Strood's quartz eye glittered horribly. ‘If it does, however, then Dunvice's dying act will be to release the skinkin. You understand, of course.'

The last part was addressed to Dunvice along with a smile that made her want to run and scream, half-werewolf or not.

‘The skinkin has only one desire. It cannot stop or rest until it has killed the victim I choose for it.' He chuckled. ‘I think you will find that even luck won't stop a skinkin.'

‘Is clever,' said Jibbit, but he inched away again. He was beginning to get a creepy feeling and he didn't like it.

By now Strood had arranged the bundle so the head of the hare skin was roughly placed over the cat skull. He paused, waiting, sensing the air.

‘Aha, here it comes. The Dead of Night is just arriving.'

Nothing changed. The moon went on shining, the dark didn't get any darker or any colder and yet …

Jibbit whimpered and Dunvice shivered, her heart turning over with dread. Scribbins shuddered. His eyes went distant and his face paled to the colour of putty. Sweat broke out on his skin. He dropped his notebook, his hands fluttering over his heart.

Leaning towards the bundle on the table Strood paused, then smiled. He breathed into the thing's mouth the words:

‘The legendary Ninevah Redstone.'

Dunvice gasped, her luminous eyes darted from Strood to the skinkin and back again. There was a sound like a drawn-out, strangled scream and for a moment she could have sworn that the Land shook beneath them.

Then came a strange cracking sound like small bones breaking, rearranging. The bundle heaved and twisted, the hare-skin legs pushing out, the head settling on the neck, the whole thing sitting upright. It paused, then twitched its long ears and turned its head to look at Strood, the empty sockets showing through the eye holes. It gathered itself to leap, its thin flanks quivering.

Strood slammed the cage lid over it and snapped the clips shut.

The skinkin snarled at him, letting out a sound that made Dunvice's blood tingle. A sound like screams in the night. Its empty sockets shone with a dark kind of light.

‘Excellent,' said Strood.

There was a soft thump. Both Strood and Dunvice
turned to look.

Strood sighed. ‘Has Scribbins fainted
again
? Really the man is becoming quite unreliable.'

‘I'm afraid he's dead, sir,' said Dunvice, who had gone to see. ‘Of terror, judging by the look on his face.'

‘Oh well, never mind. I think the time for note-taking is past eh?' Strood beamed at her. ‘It's all action from here on in. Better make sure everything is ready to leave at dawn, hmm?'

Mrs Dunvice reached up for Jibbit, who didn't object at all, gave a strangled ‘Yes, sir,' and left the Sunatorium.

Peace descended, or at least something pretending to be peace. Strood settled back in his armchair, checking over his plans while the crowsmorte quietly finished up the body of Secretary Scribbins.

And in the cage, the skinkin waited.

Floyd was running for his life. His breath came in gasps, the air raking in and out of his lungs like cold fire. His legs hurt. His chest hurt. In fact most of him hurt, but he kept on anyway. He was a goblin-Grimm and it was amazing how much a goblin-Grimm could endure when the chips were down and time was running away like sand in a glass.

Because time
was
running away, the Drift's days were numbered and that number was shrinking, hour by hour, minute by minute. The further Floyd got from the Terrible House, the more Land he passed that had gone to the Raw and the larger those stretches of Raw were. As far as Floyd could see, the Drift's only hope lay in a small Quick girl and her friends. So, he was going to Hilfian to find her. If he could survive the horrors currently jumping and tumbling at his heels, that was.

Under his heavy tread, cinders crunched into grey dust. On either side of him were blackened stumps that used to be trees, some of them still smouldering even so many hours later. The moonlight-silvered ruins were
strangely quiet. No birds sang, no wolves howled and there was certainly no screaming from the Dark Thing. The only sound was the hissing of the ash-stoats as they tumbled along behind him in a wave of fire-seamed grey, their eyes glowing with ill will.

A Quick would have been caught by now. A Quick would have been so much smouldering ash with maybe the odd bone left over to strike dread into the hearts of other travellers. But Floyd was a Grimm.

Glancing up at the sky, Floyd saw a line of light run across the horizon, so bright he could easily see the glow of it through the drifting smoke overhead. A moment later, dawn ignited, racing across the sky in a tide of blood-red flames.

Floyd risked a look back. Behind him the ash things raised their heads to the day, but not in welcome. With a long hiss, rising as one from many throats, they exploded, bursting into a flurry of ash, that spun and whirled across the ground, then fell still.

‘Thank Galig fer that,' gasped Floyd.

They were only night magic and would be back as soon as darkness fell, but he'd be well away from the forest by then.

As he turned to face front again he saw something. A Quick kid, thin and gawky with a straggle of brown hair flopping over its face and wearing ash-covered, too-big clothes. At her feet, for it was a her he was certain, drooped a battered, pink rucksack. She was waving at him, jumping up and down with excitement or relief or something.
Floyd had never had anyone be so pleased to see him before and found himself grinning back and running all the faster, even though his legs felt like burning stumps.

‘I never expected any help,' she called as he covered the last few yards, ‘but I guess my luck came through again!'

And then, through all the dirt and the old tear stains, Floyd recognised her.

‘Ninevah Redstone!' he croaked and crashed to an exhausted heap at her feet.

The scarlet dawn that had put an end to the ash-stoats, for now at least, washed around Dark's Mansion like a sea of blood.

On the shores of the lake below, a ragged pile lay huddled. Sparks crackled across its skin and winked out with a sizzle. A wisp or two of smoke drifted away from its burned remains. There was quiet for a while. Maybe a bird or two sang. A light breeze got up and ruffled the surface of the water.

The ragged pile heaved and sat up. It shook itself into the figure of a boy, his face hollow and darkened with pain and his eyes flashing with white fire that burned in their depths like lightning in a stormy sky.

Jonas grinned and it was a grin that would have made Nin shiver if she had been there to see it.

‘You shouldn't have tried to kill me with lightning,' he said to the empty air where Ava Vispilio had stood in
Seth Carver's body. ‘Lightning is something I know about.'

He sat for a while, waiting for the Hound inside him to settle down. Once he would have been in danger of it taking him over, but he had won that battle long ago and against all the odds the Hound was tame. It had been an unexpected help and without its strength to fight the lightning raging through his body, Jonas would be dead.

He looked down at his hands and the shadow of the magic bolt from the amulet flickered over his skin. It stung, a faint reminder of the night's pain, but that was all.

‘Time to get moving,' he said firmly.

It took him a few goes, but finally he was back on his feet. He faced north-east and set off, heading towards Hilfian. It was where they had planned to go and if Nin could, he was sure she would get there somehow. And if she wasn't there herself, then someone would have heard something about her. Bound to.

He knew that with the travelling boots, Vispilio would catch up with Nin long before Jonas had even cleared the hills he could see on the horizon. Might have caught her up already, for that matter. But he had to try and warn her, there was nothing else he could do. Giving up was not an option.

Staggering a little, but gaining speed, Jonas headed into the day.

Elsewhere, others were facing the day too. It was a strange day, a day in which the balance tipped and the Drift was now more Raw than Land.

Skerridge knew it, he could sense the change like a cold breath on his skin. It gave him a doomy feeling that wouldn't go away. His bones could feel it, even when he was doing Evil Kid. He tried One-Eyed Hump-Backed Monster, Twisted Tree Man and even Mad Clown, but it was no good. He went on flicking dolefully through every shape he could think of until Hilary refused to go any further if he didn't quit.

Jik felt the same as Skerridge. The mudman's glowing eyes had a hot, fevered look. He was of the Land and the Land was dying and Skerridge couldn't help but wonder just how nasty that must feel.

They kept on walking, Jik in the lead with Hilary next, her feet bleeding from the long, long trek. And Skerridge bringing up the rear, still feeling helpless in the face of all this doom.

He just wished they would make it to Hilfian.

Some miles to the east, Azork kept on walking too. Even when the few remaining members of his hive wanted to sleep. Even when they complained that their feet, unused to the hard earth, were aching with the journey.

Even when the sun rose.

‘Indestructible, do you know what that means?' he
said to his cowering hive as the line of fire ran across the horizon. ‘In the air, in vapour form, we are vulnerable and the fires of dawn would burn us up like so much morning mist. But here, with our feet on the ground, we are strong. Our glamour is part of the night and so the light of day will show us up for what we are, but it cannot kill us,
nothing
can kill us. Walk on.'

As dawn tore across the sky, their beauty vanished like the night it came from. One of the females, her long hair now just white and thin and her face little more than a skull with eyes, began to cry. The males, skeletal now, with skin stretched so tight over their bones that it hurt, sent nervous glances at their king.

‘Trust me,' Azork said, ‘it will all be right again, soon.' He smiled, and deep in their sockets his eyes flashed with dying stars. ‘When we make it to Hilfian and feed.'