Spook’s: I Am Grimalkin Read Free Page B

tossed three coins into the cauldron.
    ‘Be seated!’ she commanded sternly, pointing to the cold stone flags before the large bubbling pot. The air was thick with the smell of blood, and each breath I took increased the metallic taste on the back of my tongue.
    I obeyed, sitting cross-legged and gazing up at her through the steam. She had remained standing beyond the cauldron, so that her body would be higher than mine, a tactic frequently employed by those who wish to dominate others.
    But I was not cowed and met her gaze calmly. ‘What did you see?’ I asked steadily. ‘What is my future?’
    She did not speak for a long time. It pleased her to keep me waiting. I think Martha was annoyed because I had asked a question rather than waiting to be told the outcome of her scrying.
    ‘You have chosen an enemy,’ she said at last. ‘The Fiend is the most powerful enemy any mortal could face. The outcome should be simple. Unless you allow it, the Fiend cannot be near you in life, but he will await your death, then seize your soul and subject it to everlasting torments. However, there is something else that I cannot see clearly. There is uncertainty – another force that may intervene; one which presents a faint glimmer of hope …’
    She paused, stepped forward and peered into the steam. Once again there was a long pause. ‘There is someone … a child just born …’
    ‘Who is this child?’ I demanded.
    ‘I cannot see him clearly,’ Martha Ribstalk admitted. ‘Someone hides him from my sight. And as for you, even with his intervention, only one highly skilled with weapons could hope to survive – only one with the speed and ruthlessness of a witch assassin, only the greatest of all witch assassins – one even more deadly than Kernolde – could do that. Nothing less will do. So what hope have you?’ Martha mocked.
    At that time Kernolde was the witch assassin of the Malkins, a fearsome woman of great strength and speed who had slain twenty-seven pretenders to her position – three each year, as this was the tenth year of her reign.
    I rose to my feet and smiled down at Martha. ‘I will slay Kernolde and then take her place. I will become the witch assassin of the Malkins, the greatest of them all.’
    Martha had laughed mockingly as I walked away, but I was perfectly serious. To defeat the Fiend I knew that I would have to develop my fighting skills and become the assassin of the Malkin clan. And then I would have to form an alliance with that unknown child.
    Eventually I learned his name.
    Tom Ward.
    I hurried on, trying to pick up my pace. The drizzle had now become a torrential downpour, driving into my face and soaking me to the skin.
    As I ran, I meditated on the art of scrying. Generally a witch uses a mirror, but some go into deep trances and glimpse the future through dreams. Some throw bones into the north wind and see how they land. It is also possible to cut open a dead animal and examine its entrails. But seeing into the future is uncertain, no matter what some scryers would have us believe. There is always the element of chance. Not everything can be foreseen – and a witch can never foretell her own death: another must scry it for her.
    I disliked Martha Ribstalk, but she was good at her art and I consulted her many times after that first session. During our final meeting she predicted the time and manner of my death – she insisted that it would come about many years into the future, but I could not rely on that. Time has many paths: perhaps I have already taken one that made her prophecy void. If so, I know exactly what step that was.
    I have allied myself with John Gregory and Thomas Ward. I have chosen to use my own dark powers to fight the dark and destroy the Fiend. That could change everything.
    I was climbing now, my pace slowing. I reached a ridge and looked back in the direction of my pursuer. I crouched low so that the kretch would not see me against the skyline, and waited, eager