"I"ve been useful enough in the past," Alice replied.
My master glanced at us in turn, his eyes full of suspicion. He certainly didn"t know about the blood jar, but I could tell that he thought something was wrong.
"Joined at the hip, are you?" he asked, frowning.
I smiled and shrugged. With a shake of his head, the Spook set off for the chapel; we both followed behind. We were still quite some distance from the ruins when he brought us to a halt. "Keep your wits about you now, lad," he said softly.
We continued forward, but much more slowly and cautiously, every step bringing us towards the chapel walls. Eventually we were standing close enough to touch the damp stones.
"I think it"s near by," said the Spook. "I can feel it in my bones ..."
I knew he was right. A chill was moving down my spine, a warning that something from the dark was very near. The Spook led the way forward along the wall, heading for the trees.
Moments later we were amongst them, a breeze in our faces, shadows dappling the ground briefly each time the moon emerged from behind the clouds. We"d taken another couple of dozen steps when my master came to a sudden halt. There were two men standing amongst the trees about fifty yards ahead of us. One was a thin, tall, scarecrow-like figure in a long dark gown; the other appeared squat and muscular, with a large head and no discernible neck.
The moon came out again and lit them, showing the true horror of what we faced. The tall man had a hard, cruel face, but it was the other figure that filled my heart with dismay and started my knees trembling. It wasn"t a true man at all. The creature had appeared squat because it had been on all fours. Now it suddenly stood upright to reveal its immense size. The face was hairy, as was the rest of the body, but it was more like fur than human hair. We were facing the buggane in the shape of a hairy man the Cruncher. Its companion had to be the shaman.
No sooner had those thoughts flicked through my head than the buggane dropped onto all fours once more. The moon went behind a cloud, plunging us into darkness, and all I could see was a pair of glowing red eyes. Then it bellowed loudly a fearful cry that made the ground and the very trees shake. So terrifying was that cry that I was rooted to the spot, unable to move.
I heard a click as the Spook released the blade from the tip of his staff, and he began to stride purposefully towards our enemies. But when the moon came out again, we saw only the buggane ahead. The shaman had vanished.
The daemon had now taken the shape of a muscular black bull with enormous horns, its huge front hooves pawing the ground in anger, its nostrils snorting clouds of steam. It was getting ready to charge.
It galloped towards the Spook, hooves drumming on the earth. My master took up a defensive position, holding his staff diagonally across his body. Compared to the buggane he appeared small and frail and looked certain to be gored and trampled underfoot. My heart was in my mouth. I stood there, terrified. My master was about to die.
Chapter 9.
It was all so quick that at first I didn"t register what had happened. The daemon completely missed the Spook, who had stepped aside at the last moment, stabbing at it with his staff. But then, as it pa.s.sed, the buggane lunged with its huge head, catching my master with its left horn and tossing him sideways. He fell hard, then rolled over and over before coming to a stop.
He wasn"t moving. Was he dead? If he wasn"t now, he soon would be. The buggane ignored Alice and me and came round in a wide circle, lowering its head so that its sharp horns pointed straight at the p.r.o.ne figure of my master. My heart lurched. It was going to charge him again.
For a moment I was unable to move, but then Alice gave a cry and started to run forward. She was waving her arms, trying to distract the buggane and make it attack her instead.
It stopped and stared at her with its huge red, baleful eyes. Then it charged at her!
All at once I was free to move again. I dropped the bags and sprinted towards Alice in an attempt to get between her and the fearsome creature. I released the blade in my staff as I ran, shouting out to distract it. "Here!" I cried. "Here! It"s me you want!"
It ignored my shouts, and my heart was in my mouth: it was upon Alice before I could get into a position to defend her. For one awful moment I thought it had trampled her, but I saw her drop to her knees and roll clear just in time.
The buggane came about again. Once more it pawed the ground and snorted hot breath through its nostrils. This time it was looking at me. I"d got what I wanted. Now I was the target!
It rushed at me, red eyes locked with mine, sharp horns ready to impale me. But I concentrated hard, sucking in a deep breath, trying to slow the flow of time outside myself. It was a gift I"d inherited from Mam something that I"d only recently discovered I possessed. I"d used it to defend myself against the Ordeen she"d said I had "a speed that mocks the tick of time".
If so, I certainly wasn"t mocking time now. The gift wasn"t easy to use and I was far from being in full control of it. I tried my best, but if time did slow, it didn"t seem to bother the buggane much. It was upon me in seconds, and as I stepped clear and dropped to one knee, its right horn missed my head by a fraction of an inch.
I"d barely time to get back on my feet before it charged at me again. This time it shook its head, sweeping its horns wide. But I"d already antic.i.p.ated that, jumped clear and stabbed at it with my staff. The blade cut it just below the ear and the creature bellowed with pain and seemed to stagger slightly before turning to attack again.
The silver blade had hurt it. If the daemon a.s.sumed the form of a worme, its armoured scales would make it hard to kill, but now I had an opportunity to plunge my blade into its heart and put an end to it. I felt more confident now and began to focus.
Concentrate! Squeeze time. Slow it. Make it halt!
It was working. The buggane really did seem to be slowing. Before, its legs had been a blur, but now I could see the individual movement of each one. As it came within reach of my staff, it was almost frozen in time, its breath in a still cloud, its red eyes like gla.s.s. Seizing my chance, I stepped to one side and raised my staff, ready to stab behind its shoulder and down into its heart. It was almost completely still now. I"d nearly done it stopped time! One thrust of my blade and the daemon would be no more. I thrust downwards, but, to my intense disappointment, met only empty air.
The buggane had vanished!
The surprise disappearance broke my concentration and I lost my grip on time. I felt the breeze on my face again, heard it sighing through the branches; the moon sent brief shadows flickering across the ground before being obscured by cloud once more.
I stood there, letting my breathing return to normal after the exertion of the struggle. Would the creature rematerialize? I"d hurt it, but not that badly. Perhaps it had sensed what I was attempting to do with time; realized the threat I posed. Would it come back this time in a more dangerous shape? Or would it whisper to me in its spirit form and start to drain my animus?
I glanced across at my master. He still wasn"t moving. How badly was he hurt? It was only then that I realized that there was no sign of Alice.
"Alice! Alice!" I called, but there was no reply. Fear clutched at my heart. Had the shaman seized her?
"Alice!" I shouted again, desperation in my voice. The only answer was a groan from the Spook, so I went over to see how he was.
As I knelt down beside him, he sat up with a grunt of pain. "Here, help me to my feet, lad ..."
I laid my staff down on the ground, put my arm around him and helped him up.
"How badly are you hurt?" I asked anxiously. There was no sign of blood but he was deathly pale.
"Fortunately the point of the horn missed me, but it whacked me hard on the shoulder and knocked me clean unconscious. I"ll live but with a headache and a few bruises to remember it by. What happened?"
I told him about my fight with the buggane and how it had vanished. "But Alice is missing," I continued. "When you were down, the buggane was about to charge you again and she distracted it. She saved your life. That"s the last I saw of her. Maybe the shaman"s got her? That was the shaman next to the daemon, wasn"t it?"
"Most likely it was, lad especially as he vanished like that. But don"t worry about the girl. She can look after herself. If she"s got any sense she"ll put some distance between herself and the buggane. And so should we."
"But what if the shaman feeds her to the buggane?"
The Spook didn"t answer but we both knew he might well do that. After all, the abhuman had sniffed Alice and found darkness within her. But there was something more immediate that put a terrible fear into my heart. She was now beyond the protection of the blood jar.
Despite the Spook"s warnings of the risks, I insisted on searching the area but found nothing, and finally I was forced to abandon it.
I was scared for Alice there was a lump in my throat as I left, following my master. The Fiend might appear at any time and take his revenge. He could slay Alice and drag her soul off into the dark for ever.
Back at the camp, racked by fears for Alice, I found it impossible to sleep. I thought dawn would never arrive, but at last morning came a bright, beautiful one, totally unsuited to my mood.
The day started badly. No sooner was I up and about than I realized that the dogs were missing. Of Claw, Blood and Bone there was no sign nor did they answer my call. They were generally obedient and it was unusual for them to wander off for so long. Was it the shaman"s doing?
There was no real breakfast just a nibble of cheese. Everyone was in a sombre mood, and Simon Sulby in particular was desperate to do something, aware that each day that pa.s.sed increased the danger to Adriana.
"I can"t just sit around here!" he said, his voice filled with anguish. "What if you fail again tonight?"
"I can guarantee nothing," the Spook replied, clearly irritated, "but I"ll tell you one thing go off alone in some foolish attempt to rescue her from that keep and there"ll be one more person in those dungeons, ready to feed to the buggane. And that"ll be you!"
"I might have little hope of rescuing Adriana, but there"s one other thing I could do. I could walk to St John"s and appeal to the Tynwald."
"The Tynwald?" I asked. "Is that the island"s Ruling Council?"
Simon shook his head. "No, it"s the Parliament, an elected body, but they appoint the Council and have the power to overrule them. They"ll be meeting in a few days in St John"s the village by the witch tower where they imprisoned you. The Tynwald could order Lord Barrule to free Adriana."
"Are they likely to listen to you?"
"They"ll listen, though they rarely interfere once the Council is appointed. But what else can I do? Citizens have a right to be heard by the Tynwald. Adriana"s not a witch and never was. She understands birds that"s all. It"s a special talent and it worries some people. Why do things have to be like this? Why do people like Barrule make life so hard for others? Adriana and I just want to get married, have children and be happy. Is that too much to ask? I know one thing for sure: without her my life would be over. I couldn"t live without her."
The Spook shook his head sadly and said nothing for a while. "Look," he said at last, "just give it one more night. If we can put an end to the buggane tonight, it takes her out of any immediate danger."
Simon didn"t respond. He didn"t look convinced.
"Do you think the shaman did capture Alice?" I asked my master. I was sad for Simon and concerned about Adriana, but the plight of Alice was uppermost in my mind.
"Could well be, lad. He might have lured her away somehow by using dark magic, but he couldn"t have physically carried her off. You see, he wasn"t there in person last night. That"s why he seemed to vanish. A shaman can project his spirit from his body, and to those like us with the gift to see it, it looks just like him. The dogs are a different matter, though: as I said, he has a special power over animals. Bill Arkwright had them well-trained and it"s not like them to go off like that."
"I"d like to visit St John"s myself to buy a few provisions," Captain Baines interrupted, "and I might be able to find out what"s going on."
He left soon after that and then, despite all our attempts to persuade him otherwise, Simon set off for St John"s too, intending to find accommodation and work on his appeal. But before he left he drew us a map. He marked in Greeba Keep, the ruined chapel and Douglas. He also included the small town of Peel on the west coast of the island, indicating the mill where Adriana lived with her parents.
I studied it carefully, committing it to memory.
At dusk the captain still hadn"t returned, and we were starting to get worried. What could have delayed him?
We hid our bags as best we could so that it would be easier to fight the buggane. Salt and iron were useless against this daemon, but we both took our silver chains, which might be able to bind it temporarily, giving us a chance to use the silver-alloy blades in our staffs to finish it off.
As it grew dark, we started to walk towards the chapel ruins again. It had gone badly the previous night and I wasn"t confident that we could do any better now. The buggane was dangerous and had a powerful ally in the shaman.
We hadn"t gone far when I heard dogs barking in the distance. For a moment I feared tracker hounds again, but then I relaxed. I wasn"t going to be fooled twice.
"It"s Bill Arkwright"s dogs," I told the Spook. "They"re coming back!"
Suddenly the distant dogs began to howl and bay as if they"d caught the scent of their prey.
"Aye, lad, but they"re not alone!" cried my master.
The dogs were racing towards us, and at their heels was a large group of armed men, maybe twenty or more.
"Run for it, lad!"
We set off as fast as we could, our feet flying over the rough gra.s.s, but after several minutes we still hadn"t put any distance between ourselves and our pursuers.
"Split up!" the Spook shouted. "Divide them, and maybe they won"t catch us both!"
I obeyed, peeling off to the left while he went right. For either of us to be captured was bad enough, but what he"d suggested certainly made good sense.
For a few moments I sprinted off and the sound of the dogs actually started to fade. But just when I thought I was getting away, I heard a single bark close behind me. I looked back to see Claw closing on me fast. Beyond her were half a dozen men with clubs. They didn"t seem to be gaining on me, but the dog certainly was.
I stumbled on a tussock of gra.s.s, went down on all fours, and immediately jumped to my feet again. But before I could go anywhere Claw was on me, her teeth clamped on my breeches just above the ankle.
"Let go, Claw! Let go!" I shouted, but she growled and began to shake my leg as she would a rat.
I couldn"t believe she was behaving like this. She"d always obeyed Bill Arkwright, and had once saved my life when I"d been seized by the water witch, Morwena. Since Bill"s death I"d thought of her as my own dog. How had the shaman managed to turn her against me like this? She seemed like a different animal.
She was a big, powerful wolfhound and the only way to make her let go was to whack her hard with my staff though even that might not be enough. I raised my arm, but then hesitated ... I couldn"t bring myself to do it ... And then it was too late. The first of the yeomen a big, burly man was upon me.
He swung his club at my head. I used my staff against him rather than the dog, and he went down at my feet with a grunt. I felled a second a.s.sailant, but then I was surrounded. What happened next was bad. Claw snarled and transferred her grip from my breeches to my ankle. I felt her teeth sink in. My sense of shock at her behaviour was worse than the physical pain. Then a whack to my head brought me to my knees and my staff fell to the ground. The blows rained in hard; someone booted me in my stomach and I doubled up in pain, fighting for breath.
I was hauled roughly to my feet, my hands were tied behind my back and I was marched off through the trees. Every so often someone would direct a kick at my back or my legs. That was bad enough, but soon the grey stone of the keep loomed up through the trees. I knew where they were taking me down into the dungeons to feed me to the buggane.
Greeba Keep had a wide moat full of murky water, but rather than a drawbridge like Malkin Tower, this fortification had a simple wooden approach ramp and a metal portcullis between two small gatehouses that were scarcely higher than the outer wall. I stood there, suffering kicks and thumps as we waited for it to be raised.
Once inside, I saw that the walls enclosed a flagged area full of stone buildings. The tall tower was right at the centre, protected by another portcullis. Two yeomen, each furnished with a flickering torch, dragged me along beneath the strong metal grille, then down some steep spiral steps until we reached a guard-room, where half a dozen men sat eating while others cleaned boots and polished armour.
I was taken through a doorway opposite them and down more steps into the damp darkness. Eventually we emerged in a narrow pa.s.sageway dripping with water, with soft mud that squelched underfoot. At one point I saw water cascading down the wall I a.s.sumed we were pa.s.sing under the moat, heading for the deep dungeons to the south, within the buggane"s domain. Every so often other pa.s.sageways led off to our right and left.
I"d expected to be held in a chamber similar to the one in the Tynwald witch tower, along with the other prisoners, including Adriana, but we went straight past a row of narrow cells: I heard no sounds or movement so it was impossible to tell if any were occupied. One of the yeomen unlocked the door of the one at the end and, after cutting the ropes that bound my hands, thrust me inside. Once the metal door clanged shut, I was plunged into complete darkness.
I waited for the footsteps to die away and then reached into my pocket for my tinderbox and candle stub. I always carry them with me because spook"s business often means working after dark or in underground chambers. I also checked on the blood jar, relieved to find that it was still safe. But poor Alice she was beyond its protection. I could hardly bear to think about the risk she faced from the Fiend.
I was surprised that I hadn"t been searched and still had my silver chain not that it would be any use against the buggane in its spirit form as it came to draw the life from my body.
I managed to light the candle, but the underground cell proved even worse than I"d expected. Not even straw to lie on. There was an oddity too: three of the walls were made of damp stone but the fourth was just earth hard-packed sub-soil. My hands began to tremble, making the candle flame flicker because low down, in the centre of that earthen wall, was the dark entrance to a tunnel.
Was it one of the buggane"s tunnels? I bent low and peered in. The rear part was still in partial shadow, but it seemed to come to a dead end no more than fifteen feet inside. Had someone tried to dig an escape tunnel and been discovered? If so, why hadn"t the guards filled it in again?
I had another way out of the cell; one other item in my pocket that might prove useful my special key. It had been crafted by the Spook"s brother, Andrew, and could open most locks. Not that I"d be in a rush to use it. I could probably get out of the cell easily enough, but then there was both an inner and an outer portcullis controlling access to the keep. The mechanisms to raise them would be guarded, so escape from the keep seemed out of the question.
Of course, there were other cells nearby, and one of them might hold Adriana. If they caught the Spook, they might bring him here too but I"d probably hear them in the pa.s.sageway outside, so it was best to bide my time. Several of us working together would have a better chance of getting out.
I waited for long time but heard nothing. Surely, if they"d caught the Spook, he"d have been brought here by now? Perhaps he"d managed to escape? Eventually I blew out the candle to save it for future use, then curled myself up into a ball on the earth floor and tried to sleep. It was cold and damp, and soon I began to shiver. I was aching all over and covered in bruises from the beating I"d suffered. There was no Alice here to offer relief from pain with her herbs only time would heal me.
Several times I dozed off, only to wake up with a jerk. But the final time I awoke, it was for reasons other than cold and discomfort.
I could hear the patter of earth falling onto the floor. Someone or something was emerging from the tunnel ...
Chapter 10.
Iopened my tinderbox, and despite the trembling of my hands managed to light the candle stub. I stared at the earthen wall in horror. A hairy head, arms and upper torso were visible at the entrance of the tunnel and the creature was looking directly towards me. It was huge.