"The Spooks battle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Joseph)

Chapter XXIII

Blood Moon

I moved west, trying to get as far away from the hill as possible. The witches had fled the summit, and there was a risk that I might encounter one or more of them at any point.I couldn't wait to be clear of the Pendle district altogether. The storm was dying down and moving away to the east; now the flashes of lightning were more distant, the gaps between these and the subsequent rumbles of thunder growing. Darkness was both friend and enemy: friend because it aided my swift, secret passage across witch country; enemy because out of it at any second might emerge the Fiend, the Devil himself.A dark wood lay in my path and I paused, listening carefully before I moved on into the trees. The wind had died down completely, and everything was very still. Not a leaf moved. All was silent. But it didn't feel right. My instincts warned me of danger waiting within. I turned and decided to make a detour round the outside of the wood, avoiding meeting danger head on. But it didn't help. Whatever it was came looking for me.A dark shape stepped out from behind the trunk of an ancient oak and moved into my path. Trembling, I lifted the Spook's staff and pressed the secret lever so that, with a click, the blade emerged from its recess.It was very dark beneath the tree, but the figure that confronted me and the pale glimmer of the face-most of all, the bare feet-were familiar to me.

Even before she spoke, I knew that it was Mab Mouldheel."I've come to say good-bye," she said softly. "You could've been mine, Tom, and then none of this would have happened. You'd have been safe with me, not running for your life like this. Together we could've sorted the Malkins once and for all. Now it's too late. Soon you'll be dead. You've got a few hours at the most. That's all that's left to you now."You don't see everything!" I said angrily. "So get out of my way before -"I raised the staff toward her, but Mab just laughed. "I've seen where you're going now. It wasn't too hard to see that. Think your mam's room's going to save you, do you? Well, don't be so sure about that! Nothing stops Old Nick. His will be done, on earth as it is in hell. The world belonged to him in the old days, and now it's his once more and he'll do what he wants with it. King o' the world, he is, and nothing stands in his way."How could you do it?" I asked angrily. "How could you be part of that madness? You told me yourself that the Fiend can't be controlled. He'll control you and threaten the whole world. What you've done is insane. I can't understand why you'd do it!"Why? Why?" shouted Mab. "Don't you know why? I cared about you, Tom. Really cared. I Loved you!"

I was stunned by her use of the word "love." For a moment we both fell silent. But then Mab's torrent of words continued."I trusted you. Then you betrayed me. But now we're finished forever, and I don't care what happens to you. Even if you escape Old Nick, it's odds on that you'll never get home anyway. You'll be dead long before then. The Malkins aren't taking any chances. Want you dead real bad. To make doubly sure, they've set Grimalkin on you. She's after you now, and not too far behind. If you're lucky, she'll kill you quickly and there won't be too much pain. Best turn round, go back toward her, and get it over with, because if you make it hard for her, then she'll make it hard for you. She'll kill you slowly and painfully!" I took a deep breath and shook my head. "You'd better hope that you're right, Mab," I said. "If I survive, you're going to be very sorry. One day I'll come back to Pendle for you. Especially for you. And you'll spend the rest of your life in a pit eating worms!"

I ran straight at her, and Mab flinched to one side as I sped past. I was no longer conserving my strength now. I was running hard through the darkness. Running for my life, imagining Grimalkin closing in on me with every stride I took.At times I was forced to rest. Running made my throat hot and dry, and I had to stop occasionally to slake my thirst from streams. I couldn't afford to halt for long, because Grimalkin would be running, too. They said that she was strong and tireless. My knowledge of the County wouldn't help me too much either. No advantage in taking shortcuts. Grimalkin was County, too-and a skilled assassin, able to track me whichever obscure path I chose.Soon I had another problem. Things started to feel very wrong. Since becoming the Spook's apprentice I'd often been scared, and mostly with good reason. I had two very good reasons now: My pursuit by Grimalkin, and the threat conjured up by Wurmalde and the three covens. But it was more than that. I can only describe it as a sense of foreboding and anxiety. The feeling that usually only comes in nightmares -an extreme dread, a mortal fear. One moment the world was the way it had always been; the next, it had changed forever.It was as if something had entered my world as I ran toward Jack's farm -something as yet invisible-and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

That was my first warning that things were terribly wrong. The second was to do with time. Night or day, I've always known what time it is. Give or take a minute or so, I can easily tell the time by the position of the sun or the stars. Even without them, though, I always just know. But as I ran, what my head told me didn't match what I could see. It should have been dawn, but the sun hadn't come up. When I looked toward the eastern horizon, there wasn't even the faintest glimmer of light. There were no clouds now-the wind had torn them to tatters and wafted them east. But when I looked up, there were no stars either. No stars at all. It just wasn't possible. At least, not possible in the world as it had once been.But there was one object very low in the sky: the moon-which shouldn't have been visible. The final stage of the waning moon is a very thin crescent with its horns pointing from left to right. I'd seen that yesterday before the storm struck Pendle. Now the moon should have been totally dark. Invisible. Yet there was a full moon, very low on the eastern horizon. A moon that didn't shine with its normal silvery light. The moon was blood red.There was no wind either. Not a leaf moved. Everything was utterly still and silent. It was as if the whole world was holding its breath and I was the only living, breathing, moving creature on its surface.

It was summer, but it suddenly became very cold. My breath steamed in the freezing air, and the grass at my feet whitened with hoarfrost. Hoarfrost in August!So I ran on toward Jack's farm, the only sound that of my boots beating a rhythmical tattoo on the hardening earth.I seemed to be running for an eternity, but at last I saw Hangman's Hill ahead of me. Beyond it was the farm. Soon I was jogging up into the trees that shrouded its upper reaches. I was so close now; so close to the refuge that Mam had prepared. But the moon was red -so red, bathing everything in its lurid, baleful light. And the hanging men 'were there. The ghasts. The remnants of those -who had been hanged long ago, during the civil war that had torn the whole land asunder, dividing the County, ripping families apart, setting brother against brother.I'd seen the ghasts before. The Spook had made me confront them as -we set off from the farm in the first minutes of my apprenticeship. As a young lad, I'd heard them from my bedroom. They were a fact; they scared the farm dogs, keeping them from the pastures immediately below. But even when I'd confronted them with the Spook, they had never seemed so vivid, never so real. Now they groaned and choked as they slowly turned, suspended from the creaking branches. And their eyes seemed to be staring toward me in accusation -eyes that seemed to be saying that it was somehow my fault; that I was to blame for them hanging there.But they were just ghasts, I told myself, remembering one of the very first things the Spook had taught me. They weren't ghosts -lingering sentient spirits, bound to the scene of their death. They were just fragments, memories remaining while their spirits had passed on, hopefully to a better place. Still, they stared hard at me, and their gaze chilled me to the bone. And then there was a sudden alarming sound: Someone was running up the hill toward me, feet thundering on the hard, frozen ground!Grimalkin, the witch assassin, was behind me, and she was closing in for the kill.