The Spook 9 - Slither's tale Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Extract from The Spooks Bestiary

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Nessa’s Nightmare

  Chapter 1: Is it a Trade?

  Chapter 2: No Manners at All

  Chapter 3: The Dark Tower

  Chapter 4: The Kobalos Beast

  Chapter 5: I Must Feed!

  Chapter 6: The Shaiksa Assassin

  Chapter 7: The Bite of a Blade

  Chapter 8: Only One Chance

  Chapter 9: North to Valkarky

  Chapter 10: The Hyb Warrior

  Chapter 11: His Big Stinky Mouth

  Chapter 12: The Keeper of the Gate

  Chapter 13: The Haggenbrood

  Chapter 14: Gossip and News

  Chapter 15: Grimalkin

  Chapter 16: The Dead Witch

  Chapter 17: Do We Have a Trade?

  Chapter 18: A Very Interesting Question

  Chapter 19: Hostile Hungry Eyes

  Chapter 20: The Tawny Death

  Chapter 21: The Slarinda

  Chapter 22: The Kangadon

  Chapter 23: He Who Can Never Die

  Chapter 24: Daughter of Darkness

  Chapter 25: Farewell to My Sister

  Chapter 26: The Slave Kulad

  Chapter 27: A Cry in the Night

  Chapter 28: We will Meet Again

  Slither’s Dream

  Glossary of The Kobalos World

  About the Author

  The Wardstone Chronicles

  Also by Joseph Delaney

  Copyright

  About the Book

  My name is Slither, and before my tale is finished, you’ll find out why . . .

  Slither is not human. Far from the Spook-protected County, he preys upon humans, sneaking into their homes to gorge upon their blood while they sleep.

  When a local farmer dies, it’s only natural that Slither should want to feast on his lovely daughters. But the farmer has offered him a trade: in return for taking the younger girls to safety, Slither can have the eldest daughter, Nessa, to do with as he wishes . . .

  Slither’s promise takes him and Nessa on a treacherous journey where enemies await at every turn. Enemies that include Grimalkin, the terrifying witch assassin, still searching for a way to destroy the Fiend for good.

  The latest instalment of the Wardstone Chronicles introduces Slither, one of the most terrifying creatures Joseph Delaney has yet created.

  for Marie

  Illustration by Julek Heller called ‘Kobalos’

  EXTRACT FROM THE SPOOKS BESTIARY

  Illustrated by Julek Heller

  The Kobalos

  The Kobalos are not human. They walk upright but have something of the appearance of a fox or a wolf. The body is covered with dark hair; the face and hands are shaven according to custom; the mage wears a long black coat with a slit in the back to accommodate his tail, which can function as an extra limb.

  These mages are solitary creatures who shun their fellow citizens and usually dwell beyond the fringes of the frozen Kobalos domain, which is far to the north of the continent known as Europa. Each one ‘farms’ a haizda, a territory which he has marked out as his own. Within it there are several hundred humans, living in hamlets, villages and farms. He rules by fear and magecraft, harvesting souls and accumulating power. He usually lives in an old, gnarled ghanbala tree, sleeping by day but travelling the boundaries of his haizda by night, taking the blood of humans and animals for sustenance. He can shift his shape, taking on the appearance of animals, and can also vary his size. This type of mage is also a formidable warrior whose favourite weapon is a sabre.

  The Kobalos are a fierce, warlike race who, with the exception of their mages, inhabit Valkarky, a city deep within the Arctic Circle.

  The name Valkarky means the City of the Petrified Tree; it is filled with all types of abomination that have been created by dark magic. Its walls are constructed and renewed by creatures that never sleep; creatures that spit soft stone from their mouths. The Kobalos believe that their city will not stop growing until it covers the entire world.1

  1 The above is based upon the writings of a very early spook called Nicholas Browne, who travelled far beyond the borders of the County. Apart from his notebooks, there is no evidence that any of his assertions are true but we must keep an open mind. The world is a big place and much remains to be explored – John Gregory

  THE HIGHEST POINT IN THE COUNTY

  IS MARKED BY MYSTERY.

  IT IS SAID THAT A MAN DIED THERE IN A

  GREAT STORM, WHILE BINDING AN EVIL

  THAT THREATENED THE WHOLE WORLD.

  THEN THE ICE CAME AGAIN, AND WHEN IT

  RETREATED, EVEN THE SHAPES OF THE

  HILLS AND THE NAMES OF THE TOWNS

  IN THE VALLEYS CHANGED.

  NOW, AT THAT HIGHEST POINT ON

  THE FELLS, NO TRACE REMAINS OF WHAT

  WAS DONE SO LONG AGO,

  BUT ITS NAME HAS ENDURED.

  THEY CALL IT –

  THE WARDSTONE.

  IT IS VERY dark in my bedroom. The candle has guttered, the flame has flickered and died. It is cold too, despite the extra blankets. It has been a long winter, one of the very worst. This is spring but there is still a crust of frozen snow on the fields and the farmyard flags, and also ice inside my room patterning the windowpanes.

  But it is my birthday tomorrow. I will be ten. I am looking forward to the cake. I have to blow out all its candles with one really big breath. If I do that, Father will give me my present. It is a dress – a red dress with white lace at the neck and hem.

  I want to sleep. I squeeze my eyes tight shut and try. It’s better to sleep because then the night will pass quickly. I will open my eyes to see sunlight streaming in through the window, dust motes gleaming like tiny suns.

  Suddenly I hear a noise. What is it? It sounds like something scratching on the floor by the wainscot. Could it be a rat? I fear big grey rats with their small eyes and long whiskers. My greatest fear of all is that one might find its way into my bed.

  My heart begins to race with fear and I think of calling out for my father. But my mother died two years ago and he manages the farm all by himself. His days are long and tiring and he needs his sleep. No, I must be brave. The rat will soon go away. Why should it bother with my bed? There is no food here.

  Again there comes a scratching of sharp claws on wood. My heart jumps with fear. The noise is nearer now, halfway between the window and my bed. I hold my breath, listening for the sound to be repeated. It is, and now it is much closer, just below my bed. If I were to look down, it might be staring up at me with its small beady eyes.

  I must get up. I will run to my father’s room. But what if the rat’s whiskers touch my feet? What if I tread on its long thin tail?

  Now it gets even louder. I feel a tug at my bedclothes and shiver with fear. The rat is climbing up onto my bed, using its claws to pull itself on top of the blankets. In a panic I try to sit up. But I can’t. I seem to be paralysed. I can open my mouth, but when I scream, no sound escapes my lips.

  The rat is crawling up onto my body now. I can feel its small sharp claws pricking into my skin through the blankets. It is sitting on my chest. Its tail goes thumpety-thump, faster and faster, keeping perfect time with the beating of my heart.

  And now there is a new thing, even more terrifying. The rat seems to be growing heavier by the second. Its weight is pressing down on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. How can that be possible? How can a rat be so large and heavy?

  Now, in the darkness, I sense its face moving c
loser to mine. It’s a big face and I can feel the rat’s warm breath on my skin. But there is something even stranger than its size and weight. Its eyes are glowing in the dark. They are large and red, and by their lurid glare I can now see its face.

  It isn’t a rat, after all. The face is that of a fox or wolf, with a long jaw and big sharp teeth. And those teeth are biting into my neck now. Long, thin, hot needles of pain pierce my throat.

  I scream. Over and over again, I scream silently. I feel as if I am dying, slipping down into the deepest darkness, away from this world.

  Then I am awake and the weight is gone from my chest. I can move now, and I sit up in bed and begin to cry. Soon I hear the sound of heavy boots pounding across the wooden boards of the corridor. The door is flung open, and Father enters carrying a candle.

  He places it on the bedside table, and moments later I am in his arms. I sob and sob, and he strokes my hair and pats my back in reassurance.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, daughter,’ he murmurs. ‘It was just a dream – just a terrible nightmare.’

  But then he holds me at arm’s length and studies my face, neck and shoulders carefully. Next he takes a white handkerchief from the pocket of his nightshirt and gently dabs it at my neck. He scrunches it up in his hand and quickly thrusts it back into his pocket. But not quite fast enough to prevent me from seeing the spots of blood.

  Is the nightmare over?

  Am I awake?

  Or am I still dreaming?

  I WOKE UP feeling very thirsty.

  I’m always thirsty when I wake up, so there was nothing different there, no hint at all that this would be a day to remember.

  I climbed out through the cleft, high in the trunk of my old ghanbala tree, and gazed down upon the white, frosty ground far below.

  The sun wouldn’t rise fully for almost an hour and the stars were still visible. I knew all five thousand of them by name, but Cougis, the Dog Star, was my favourite. It was red, a bloodshot eye peering through the black velvet curtain that the Lord of Night casts over the sky.

  I had been asleep for almost three months. I always sleep through that time – the darkest, coldest part of winter, which we call shudru. Now I was awake, and thirsty.

  It was too close to dawn for taking blood from the humans in my haizda – the ones I farmed. My next preference would be to hunt, but nothing would be about yet. There was nothing to satisfy my thirst – yet there was another way. I could always go and intimidate Old Rowler and force him to trade.

  I squeezed back into the tree and slipped my two sharpest blades into the scabbards on my chest. Then I pulled on my long, thick, black overcoat, which has thirteen buttons made of best-quality bone. The coat comes down as far as my brown leather boots and the sleeves are long enough to cover my hairy arms.

  I’m hairy all over – and there’s something else I should mention. Something that makes me different from you.

  I have a tail.

  Don’t laugh – don’t pull a face or shake your head. Be sensible and feel sorry for yourself because you don’t have one. You see, mine’s a long, powerful tail that’s better than an extra arm.

  One more thing – my name is Slither, and before my tale is finished you’ll find out why.

  Finally I laced up my boots and squeezed back through the cleft and onto the branch.

  Then I stepped out into space.

  I counted to two before flicking up my slithery tail. It coiled and tightened; the skin rasped against the lowest branch, breaking off shards of bark that fell like dark flakes of snow. I hung there by my tail for a few seconds while my keen eyes searched the ground below. There were no tracks to mark the frost. Not that I expected any. My ears are sharp and I awake at the slightest sound, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

  I dropped again, landing on the cold hard ground. Then I began to run, watching the ground speed by in a blur beneath my legs. Within minutes I’d be at Old Rowler’s farm.

  I respected Old Rowler.

  I respected him just enough to turn what might have been a cruel taking into a wary trade. He was very brave for a human. Brave enough to live close to my tree when many others had fled. Brave enough even to trade.

  I strolled along below his wooden boundary fence, but the moment I reached the farmyard flags, I blew myself up to the size that works best with most humans. Not big enough to be too intimidating, but not small enough to give Old Rowler ideas. In fact, exactly the same size as the farmer had been before his old bones had started to weaken, his spine to bend.

  I rapped on the door softly. It was my special rhythmical rap. Not loud enough to wake his three daughters but audible enough to bring the farmer huffing and puffing down the stairs.

  He opened the door no more than the width of his calloused hand. Then he held a candle to the crack so that it lit up my face.

  ‘What is it this time?’ he demanded belligerently. ‘I hoped I’d seen the last of you. It’s months since you last bothered me. I was hoping you’d never wake up again!’

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ I said, ‘and it’s too early to hunt. I need a little something to warm my belly for a few hours.’ Then I smiled, showing my sharp teeth and allowing my hot breath to steam upwards into the cold air.

  ‘I’ve nothing to spare. Times are hard,’ protested the farmer. ‘It’s been one of the hardest winters I can remember. I’ve lost cattle – even sheep.’

  ‘How are your three daughters keeping? I hope they’re well,’ I asked, opening my mouth a little wider.

  The candle began to dance and shake in Old Rowler’s hands, just as I’d expected.

  ‘You keep away from my daughters, Slither. D’ye hear? Keep away.’

  ‘I was only enquiring after their health.’ I softened my voice. ‘How’s the youngest one? I hope her cough’s better now.’

  ‘Don’t waste my time!’ he snapped. ‘What are ye here for?’

  ‘I need blood. Bleed a bullock for me – just a little blood to set me up. You can spare half a cup.’

  ‘I told you, it’s been a long hard winter,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad time and the surviving animals need all their strength to get through.’

  Seeing that I wouldn’t get something for nothing, I drew a coin from the pocket of my coat and held it so that it gleamed in the candlelight.

  Old Rowler watched as I spat onto the flank of the bullock to deaden the feeling there; so that when I made a small, precise cut in the hide, the animal wouldn’t feel a thing. The blood soon began to flow, and I caught it in the metal cup that the farmer had provided, not wasting a single drop.

  ‘I wouldn’t really harm your daughters, you know,’ I said. ‘They’ve become almost like a family to me.’

  ‘Your kind know nothing about families,’ he muttered. ‘You’d eat your own mother if you were hungry enough. What about Brian Jenson’s daughter from the farm near the river? She disappeared early last spring, never to be seen again. Too many of my neighbours have suffered at your hands.’

  I didn’t bother to deny his accusation, but neither did I confirm it. Sometimes accidents happened. Mostly I control my taking, husbanding the resources of my haizda, but occasionally the urge gets the better of me and I take too much blood.

  ‘Hey! Hang on a minute – we agreed on half a cup,’ Old Rowler protested.

  I smiled and pressed my fingers against the wound so that the blood immediately stopped flowing. ‘So we did,’ I agreed. ‘Still, three quarters of a cup’s not too bad. It’s a good compromise.’

  I took a long drink, my eyes never leaving the farmer’s face. He wore a long overcoat and I knew that its lining concealed a wickedly sharp sabre. If sufficiently threatened or provoked, the old man wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Not that Rowler, even with his sabre, posed any real threat to me, but it would bring our trade to a close. And that would be a pity because they were useful, men like him. I preferred to hunt, obviously, but the keeping of bloodstock – especially bullocks, which we
re my favourite – made things easier when times were hard. I wasn’t prepared to keep them myself, but I did appreciate the place of this farmer in the scheme of things. He was the only one in my haizda that I ever traded with.

  Perhaps I was getting old? Once I would have ripped out the throat of a human such as Rowler – ripped it out without a moment’s thought. But I was past my first flush of youth and well-advanced in the magecraft of the haizda. Already I was an adept.

  But this, my two hundredth summer, was a dangerous time for a haizda mage – the time when we sometimes fall victim to what we call skaiium. You see, living so long changes the way you think. You become more mellow, more understanding of the feelings and needs of others. That’s bad for a haizda mage, and many of us don’t survive these dangerous years because they lead to a softening of the blood-lust, a dulling of the teeth.

  So I knew I had to be careful.

  The warm blood flowed down my throat and into my stomach, filling me with new strength. I smiled and licked my lips.

  I’d no need to hunt for at least another day, so I handed the cup back to Old Rowler and headed directly for my favourite spot. It was a clearing in the small wood, on the southern slopes that overlooked the farm. Then I shrank myself down, coat and boots included, to my smallest size, the one I often use for sleeping. Now I was no larger than a grey-whiskered sewer rat.

  The ox blood, however, remained exactly the same size, so that my stomach now felt very full. Despite the fact that I’d only just woken up, the combination of a very full stomach and the newly risen sun made me feel very sleepy indeed.

  So I lay on my back and stretched out. My overcoat has a special slit, like a very short sleeve, to allow my tail out into the air. When I’m running, hunting or fighting, it coils up my back very tightly, but sometimes in summer, when the sun is shining and I’m feeling sleepy, I lie down on the warm grass and let it stretch out behind me. Happy and relaxed, I did that now, and in no time at all I was fast asleep.

  Normally, with a stomach as full as that, I’d have slept soundly for a day and a night, but just before sunset, a scream cut through the air like a blade, waking me suddenly.