Alice Read Free Page A

trapped in the space between zones? Did the path start and end with nothingness? I wondered. A dark rocky cliff lay directly ahead, and I saw that the white path didn’t end after all; it simply disappeared into the mouth of a small cave.
    Was this the entrance to the next domain?
    A yellow light shone just inside. Unless I was mistaken, it was the flickering light of a candle. Who did it belong to? Cautiously I approached the entrance and halted, peering within.
    A pair of vivid sapphire-blue eyes stared back at me. I saw a girl of about my own age. Her black hair was cut short and she had a small tattoo on her left cheek – that of a bear. Shewas sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding up her hands towards me. She had been maimed – they were dripping with blood, and the cause was terrible. Where her thumbs should have been there were two gaping wounds.
    ‘You must be Alice,’ she said. ‘My name is Thorne.’

THORNE WAS THE girl Grimalkin had trained as a witch assassin. We had never met; she had been kept a secret from most people, but I knew all about her, especially how she had died. She had been slain by the servants of the Fiend on the edge of Witch Dell. They had sliced off her thumbs while she still lived, and the shock and loss of blood had killed her.
    The eyes that now regarded me with such seriousness were surprisingly gentle. But the lithe body crisscrossed with leather straps containing an assortment of blades marked her as a warrior.
    ‘Do you know that you’re being followed?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes. I think it’s the kretch,’ I replied. ‘I used magic to keep it at bay but it won’t hold it for very long.’
    That was true. It was beyond death now. How could it be stopped?
    As if the creature knew we were discussing it, there came another howl from the darkness, once again a hunting cry; it sounded very close.
    ‘We must hurry!’ Thorne rose to her feet. ‘Take the candle and follow me!’
    I looked beyond her and saw that the cave opened up into a tunnel.
    Thorne turned towards it, and I snatched up the candle and jogged after her.
    Sometimes the tunnel was so low that we were forced to bow our heads even when crawling on all fours. In one way that made me feel better – for how could the kretch hope to squeeze through such a confined space? But then we would briefly emerge into caverns so vast that the candle could not illuminate the roof. There were ledges far above us, and I sensed malevolent, hostile eyes peering down at us.
    ‘Whose domain is this?’ I asked, shocked as my voice echoed to fill such vastness.
    At my question, Thorne came to a sudden halt and turned to face me, putting her forefinger vertically to her lips to indicate the need for silence. Blood was still dripping from her mutilated hands.
    ‘We are still in the place between domains, but sometimes the white path gives way to tunnels that are somewhat safer –too small to accommodate anything really big and dangerous.’
    ‘How big is the kretch, then? Grimalkin told me it was the size of a small horse. Can it follow us here?’
    ‘It can and will,’ Thorne answered. ‘The laws of size, matter and distance are very different to those back on earth. It might well be catching us now. But there are worse things than its size. It was fathered by Tanaki, one of the hidden daemons that dwell in the abyss. He too may come after us, but fortunately he truly is too large to enter this system of tunnels.’
    ‘Were you waiting for me?’ I asked her.
    Thorne nodded. ‘You have friends here as well as enemies. I will do what I can to help. But why have you come? The living should not enter the dark.’
    For a moment I hesitated. Could I trust Thorne? I asked myself. But then I remembered how positively Grimalkin had spoken about her. I had never heard the witch assassin speak of another with such warmth. Also, I had been alone in the dark and had not expected to be helped. My chances of success would be much greater