Alice (20 page)

‘How long will you be?’

‘As long as it takes – just wait.’

Then Thorne was gone and I was alone in the shadow of the wall, shivering in my wet clothes.

IT WAS HARD
to judge the passing of time, and I crouched there, wet and uncomfortable, for what seemed like an hour or more.

I began to wonder if Thorne would ever return. Maybe she’d changed her mind again and sided with my enemies once more. Perhaps she’d been caught.

I could wait only a little while longer. There was no way of knowing how much time had passed back on earth – it could already be close to Halloween. Soon I would have to try and find my own way into the basilica.

But finally Thorne reappeared and, without a word of explanation, crooked her finger in a sign that I should follow her.

Keeping mostly to back alleys, we approached the basilica in a slow widdershins spiral. We arrived at the side of the huge building. Between us and the wall was a large paved area, perhaps a hundred paces across. Whether we faced south, north, east or west, it was impossible to say in a domain where the blood-moon remained fixed in the same position.

Thorne came to a halt, and as we dropped into a crouch, she pointed. ‘Do you see the third door from the left?’ she asked.

I counted quickly. There were five doors of varying sizes. The third, oval in shape, was the smallest of them all. I nodded.

‘That’s the best way in. I’ve been told it isn’t usually guarded,’ Thorne told me.

‘Do you trust the people you spoke to?’ I said.

‘As much as you can trust anybody who’s been in the dark for some time. The longer you’re here, the more desperate you become. I spoke to a group of people and trust some more than others. But all agreed that was the door to use.’

I wasn’t filled with confidence, but I had to take the risk. I nodded again, and Thorne pointed towards the door and put her finger to her lips before setting off immediately. I followed at her heels.

We were less than fifty strides from the the door we’d been directed to when I heard a bell begin to toll; the one that summoned the chosen to be slain in the basilica – and then the random taking of blood; now we were in immediate danger.

At the thirteenth toll of that dreadful bell, something shrieked out from above; I recognized it immediately – the raucous cry of a chyke. And it wasn’t alone. Others
were swooping down towards us, a dozen or more of the bat-like creatures, their clawed hands extended to rend our flesh, their eyes glowing red like embers. Last time I had estimated the creature to be of approximately human size, but these appeared even larger.

Thorne had her blades but I had no weapons at all, and as I’d just learned to my cost, magic didn’t work near the basilica. I decided to try again anyway: I flicked at the nearest chyke with my mind – a spell of repulsion. It didn’t work. The creature continued to glide towards me, its open jaws dripping saliva.

We began to run towards the shelter of the dark oval doorway.

The chyke attacked, swooping down, and I dived forward into a roll. But not before I felt a sharp pain in my forehead. When I scrambled to my feet, blood was running into my eyes, but Thorne had returned to stand over me and, despite the pain she must be feeling in her hands, was holding two blades and trying to drive away the attacker.

I glanced about me and knew a moment of real terror. Other chykes were coming for us – too many for Thorne to fend off alone. We were about to be ripped to pieces.

I lurched to my feet, holding my arms high to protect my face. I anticipated the tearing of my flesh, but there was no pain. Instead, the claws that had been aiming for my face were gone. I looked up and saw the chykes fleeing from another, larger winged being. One was too late and, screaming in terror, was seized by its pursuer. It was quickly ripped asunder, the bloody pieces falling onto the flags behind us.

My stomach turned over as I saw the killer banking and flying towards us. The rest of the chykes had fled. Were we its new prey? I wondered. But then I recognized the predator.

‘It’s Wynde, the lamia witch who died before the walls of Malkin Tower,’ Thorne said. ‘She was a friend in life and will be so in death.’

Grimalkin had told me that she had watched from the battlements of the tower, unable to help, as Wynde had been slain by the kretch. It had eaten her heart, thus sending her directly to the dark. But the lamia witch had fought bravely, and others had to help the kretch to overcome her – amongst them the dark mage Bowker, and three witches who had speared her with knives on long poles.

Later Grimalkin had slain them all.

Wynde landed close to us. ‘Why have you, who still live and breathe, entered the dark?’ she demanded of me. ‘Why have you risked so much?’

Her voice was guttural and her words difficult to make out. Sometimes when a lamia was in the process of shape-shifting towards the feral, she temporarily lost the use of language altogether. In this final winged form it usually returned, but it was still difficult to understand what she was saying.

‘I am here to gain the means to destroy the Fiend. The gate I need to reach his domain is somewhere inside the basilica and I must use it,’ I told her. ‘There is something vital there that I must retrieve.’

‘Enemies wait for you beyond that door,’ she rasped.

Thorne scowled. ‘You’ve been betrayed again, Alice, but
it wasn’t of my doing, I swear it. The friends I spoke of were witches who sometimes cared for me after my cruel father beat me. I hoped they could be trusted. I’m sorry – I’ve let you down again.’

‘You did your best, Thorne,’ I told her.

‘There is another entrance, a high one in the roof,’ said Wynde. ‘I will carry you up to it. Who will be first?’

‘Go first!’ Thorne commanded. ‘You’ve no weapons.’

There was no time to argue. Wynde flapped her wings and hovered before me, her scaly knees level with my face.

‘Grab onto my legs!’ she commanded.

I’d barely managed to get a proper hold before she lurched upwards; the ground receded at a terrifying speed. Moments later she was flying towards the dark mass of the basilica. I was facing backwards, and the first indication I had that we were over it was when we passed the tower, the tip of the lamia’s wing almost brushing the stones. Then she folded her wings close to her body and plummeted downwards like a stone. I gasped as I left my stomach behind.

The roof rushed up to meet us, but at the last moment Wynde unfurled her wings, and my feet made contact with the tiles. I released my grip on her legs and she flew up again, heading back to collect Thorne.

I looked around: I was standing with my back to a huge buttress that supported the square tower. Ahead of me was a narrow path leading between two sloping roofs to a wall with a narrow door in it. Was that a way into the basilica? We couldn’t now be seen by those on the ground, but some
would have noted our journey with the lamia. Now others within the building might be racing to intercept us. We needed to move quickly.

I waited impatiently for the lamia to bring Thorne to me. What was taking so long? I had a moment of fear. What if in the meantime she’d been attacked by the chykes again? How long could she hope to hold such a fierce flock at bay?

Then I heard the beating of wings and sighed with relief as Wynde lowered Thorne to stand beside me. Hovering before us, the winged lamia pointed at the door with a taloned hand.

‘That is the way,’ she confirmed. ‘There may be others inside who are willing to help, but whether they can fight their way to you is uncertain.’

‘We thank you for your help,’ I told her.

‘Thank me by getting what you seek. Thank me by putting an end to the Fiend!’ she cried. Then she soared aloft, flew round the tower, and was lost to sight.

Wasting no time, we hurried towards the door. There was no visible handle. What if it was locked? I asked myself. The spell of opening wouldn’t work in this place.

But I needn’t have feared. It opened at the pressure of my hand and swung inwards, its hinges groaning. It was very dark inside, and I reached for the candle in my pocket; but as I brought it out, I remembered that without magic I wouldn’t be able to light it. Thorne shrugged, then squeezed past me and went through the door slowly, her hands extended before her. She was touching the wall, feeling her way in the dark.

‘It seems to be a spiral staircase,’ she said, her voice
hardly more than a whisper. ‘It goes widdershins. Feel for the rail on the right.’

Pushing the candle back into my pocket, I went through the open doorway cautiously. Sliding my hand down the rail, I steadied myself as I descended the stone steps, following the spiral downwards. Hemmed in by cold stone walls on both sides, I felt claustrophobic. There was no way to stop our pointy shoes clacking on the stone steps, and I hoped that nothing was waiting for us below: it would have plenty of warning of our arrival.

We must have gone down at least a couple of hundred steps when I noticed a yellow flickering light from below which allowed me to see Thorne’s silhouette. The constant turning left was starting to make me feel dizzy and it seemed to be getting warmer, which wasn’t helping.

We emerged onto a narrow ledge, and glancing beyond it, my dizziness grew worse and I almost fell forward. The space I gazed upon was vast and the ground lay far below. It resembled some gigantic cavern, and my first thought was that the inside of the basilica was somehow larger than the outside. Then I remembered the house where Betsy Gammon had been the keeper of the water witches, and realized that the effect was due to something similar. The lowest level of the basilica had been excavated in the same way. Its floor was far lower than the ground outside the building.

Nothing seemed to be moving below, but I could see a number of structures. Were they the altars to the various Old Gods of the dark?

‘Where’s the gate, then?’ I said, immediately realizing I had made a mistake. I had kept my voice low, but it was amplified by the vast inner area of the basilica, and echoed from wall to wall.

Had I further alerted our enemies to our presence?

In response to my question, Thorne put a warning finger against her lips and pointed downwards.

But how could we get there? The narrow ledge didn’t slope down. It ran along the wall at the same height. However, Thorne set off along the ledge, taking slow, careful steps. I kept my eyes on her right shoulder, the one nearest the wall, not daring to glance into the scary abyss. Beyond her I saw an archway in the wall. When Thorne ducked her head and stepped inside it, I followed. Narrow steps led downwards into the dark, slowly becoming wider, the dank walls pressing in on either side.

Once again the thought came to me that someone or something would be waiting for us below. Could it be that our every move was known? Again I had the sense of being watched. This time it was stronger than ever.

I could see flickering lights ahead. Below us lay a chamber, with candles in wall brackets.

Thorne whispered, ‘We’re getting closer to the gate. But if it is down there, then so are our enemies. They control it.’

She was still going down but her steps were slowing. Then she suddenly stopped completely. ‘Go back!’ she shouted, spinning round to face me and gesticulating wildly. ‘It’s a trap! I can see enemies waiting below!’

But it was already too late. Heavy boots thudded down the steps behind us. I couldn’t see who they were, but I knew that there were too many boots and too many enemies. We were trapped.

Thorne drew her blades, and then ran down the steps towards the chamber. I followed hard on her heels. Once on level ground, I stood at her right shoulder and stared at the occupants of the small windowless room we found ourselves in.

There were three of them.

Two were dressed in the garb of Pendle witches, with tattered black gowns and pointy shoes. The third was a huge abhuman with too many teeth to fit into his mouth.

I faced three old enemies: Bony Lizzie, Mother Malkin and Tusk.

I SHOULD HAVE
realized that at least one of the enemies I had bested on earth would be waiting in the basilica to get their revenge.