The Last Apprentice Book 2 Read Online

  CONTENTS

Book One: Revenge of the Witch

Book 2: Curse of the Bane

Book Three: Dark of the Soul Stealer

Book Iv: Assail of the Fiend

Volume 5: Wrath of the Bloodeye

Book Half-dozen: Clash of the Demons

Volume 7: Rise of the Huntress

Volume Eight: Rage of the Fallen

Volume Nine: Grimalkin the Witch Assassin

Volume X: Lure of the Dead

Book Eleven: Slither

Book Twelve: I Am Alice

Book Thirteen: Fury of the Seventh Son

The Spook's Tale and Other Horrors

A Coven of Witches

The Spook's Bestiary: The Guide to Creatures of the Nighttime

About the Author

Near the Publisher

Dedication

For Marie

Contents

Dedication

Chapter I - A 7th Son

Chapter 2 - On the Route

Affiliate III - Number 13 Watery Lane

Chapter IV - The Letter of the alphabet

Chapter 5 - Boggarts and Witches

Affiliate Half-dozen - A Daughter with Pointy Shoes

Chapter VII - Someone Has to Do It

Affiliate Eight - Old Mother Malkin

Chapter 9 - On the Riverbank

Chapter X - Poor Billy

Chapter XI - The Pit

Affiliate XII - The Desperate and the Featherbrained

Chapter 13 - Hairy Pigs

Chapter 14 - The Spook's Advice

The Journal of Thomas J. Ward

Credits

Copyright

REVENGE OF THE WITCH

CHAPTER I

A 7th Son

WHEN the Spook arrived, the light was already beginning to fail. Information technology had been a long, hard day, and I was ready for my supper.

"You're sure he's a seventh son?" he asked. He was looking down at me and shaking his caput doubtfully.

Dad nodded.

"And you were a seventh son, besides?"

Dad nodded again and started stamping his feet impatiently, splattering my breeches with aerosol of brown mud and manure. The rain was dripping from the summit of his cap. It had been raining for virtually of the month. At that place were new leaves on the copse, merely the spring weather was a long fourth dimension coming.

My dad was a farmer and his begetter had been a farmer, too, and the first rule of farming is to keep the farm together. You can't but divide information technology upward among your children; it would go smaller and smaller with each generation until at that place was nothing left. So a father leaves his farm to his eldest son. Then he finds jobs for the balance. If possible, he tries to notice each a merchandise.

He needs lots of favors for that. The local blacksmith is one choice, especially if the farm is big and he'due south given the blacksmith plenty of work. And then it's odds on that the blacksmith will offer an apprenticeship, but that's nonetheless only one son sorted out.

I was his seventh, and by the time information technology came to me all the favors had been used upwardly. Dad was and then desperate that he was trying to get the Spook to take me on as his amateur. Or at to the lowest degree that'southward what I thought at the time. I should have guessed that Mam was behind it.

She was behind a lot of things. Long earlier I was born, information technology was her money that had bought our subcontract. How else could a 7th son have afforded it? And Mam wasn't County. She came from a land far across the sea. Most people couldn't tell, but sometimes, if y'all listened very carefully, there was a slight deviation in the manner she pronounced certain words.

All the same, don't imagine that I was existence sold into slavery or something. I was bored with farming anyway, and what they chosen the boondocks was inappreciably more than a village in the back of beyond. It was certainly no identify that I wanted to spend the remainder of my life. And then in i way I quite liked the idea of beingness a spook; it was much more than interesting than milking cows and spreading manure.

It made me nervous though, because it was a scary job. I was going to learn how to protect farms and villages from things that go crash-land in the night. Dealing with ghouls, boggarts, and all manner of wicked beasties would be all in a day's work. That's what the Spook did, and I was going to exist his apprentice.

"How old is he?" asked the Spook.

"He'll be thirteen come August."

"Bit small for his historic period. Tin can he read and write?"

"Aye," Dad answered. "He tin can exercise both, and he also knows Greek. His mam taught him, and he could speak information technology almost earlier he could walk."

The Spook nodded and looked back across the muddy path beyond the gate toward the farmhouse, as if he were listening for something. Then he shrugged. "It's a hard plenty life for a human, never mind a boy," he said. "Think he's upwardly to it?"

"He'southward strong and he'll be as big as me when he's full grown," my dad said, straightening his back and drawing himself upwardly to his total height. That done, the top of his head was simply about level with the Spook's mentum.

Suddenly the Spook smiled. Information technology was the very last matter I'd expected. His face was big and looked as if information technology had been chiseled from rock. Until then I'd thought him a scrap tearing. His long black cloak and hood made him await like a priest, but when he looked at you directly, his grim expression made him announced more similar a hangman weighing you lot up for the rope.

The hair sticking out from under the front end of his hood matched his beard, which was gray, simply his eyebrows were black and very bushy. In that location was quite a chip of black hair sprouting out of his nostrils, too, and his eyes were green, the same colour equally my own.

Then I noticed something else about him. He was carrying a long staff. Of course, I'd seen that as shortly every bit he came inside sight, but what I hadn't realized until that moment was that he was carrying it in his left manus.

Did that mean that he was left-handed like me?

Information technology was something that had caused me no end of trouble at the village schoolhouse. They'd even called in the local priest to look at me, and he'd kept shaking his head and telling me I'd have to fight it before it was besides late. I didn't know what he meant. None of my brothers were left-handed and neither was my dad. My mam was cack-handed, though, and information technology never seemed to bother her much, so when the teacher threatened to beat it out of me and tied the pen to my right hand, she took me away from the schoolhouse and from that twenty-four hour period on taught me at home.

"How much to take him on?" my dad asked, interrupting my thoughts. Now nosotros were getting down to the existent business.

"2 guineas for a month's trial. If he's up to information technology, I'll be back once more in the autumn and you'll owe me another x. If not, y'all can have him back and it'll be simply another guinea for my problem."

Dad nodded over again and the deal was done. We went into the barn and the guineas were paid, just they didn't milk shake hands. Nobody wanted to touch a spook. My dad was a dauntless human being just to stand within six anxiety of one.

"I've some business organization shut by," said the Spook, "but I'll be back for the lad at kickoff light. Make sure he's ready. I don't like to be kept waiting."

When he'd gone, Dad tapped me on the shoulder. "Information technology's a new life for you at present, son," he told me. "Go and go yourself cleaned upwardly. You're finished with farming."

When I walked into the kitchen, my brother Jack had his arm around his wife, Ellie, and she was smiling upwards at him.

I like Ellie a lot. She's warm and friendly in a way that makes you feel that she actually cares almost you. Mam says that marrying Ellie was good for Jack because she helped to make him less agitated.

Jack is the eldest and biggest of us all and, as Dad sometimes jokes, the best looking of an ugly bunch. He is big and strong, all correct, but despite his blue eyes and healthy red cheeks, hi

s blackness bushy eyebrows almost see in the middle, so I've never agreed with that. I thing I've never argued with is that he managed to attract a kind and pretty wife. Ellie has hair the color of all-time-quality harbinger three days after a good harvest and skin that really glows in candlelight.

"I'thousand leaving tomorrow morning," I blurted out. "The Spook's coming for me at first calorie-free."

Ellie's face lit upwardly. "You mean he's agreed to take you on?"

I nodded. "He's given me a calendar month's trial."

"Oh, well done, Tom. I'm really pleased for you," she said.

"I don't believe it!" scoffed Jack. "Yous, apprentice to a spook! How can you do a task similar that when you still can't slumber without a candle?"

I laughed at his joke, only he had a point. I sometimes saw things in the dark, and a candle was the all-time way to proceed them abroad then that I could get some sleep.

Jack came toward me, and with a roar got me in a headlock and began dragging me round the kitchen tabular array. Information technology was his idea of a joke. I put up just plenty resistance to humor him, and after a few seconds he permit go of me and patted me on the back.

"Well done, Tom," he said. "Yous'll make a fortune doing that job. There's but one trouble, though. . . ."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Yous'll need every penny y'all earn. Know why?"

I shrugged.

"Because the merely friends you'll have are the ones y'all buy!"

I tried to smile, but there was a lot of truth in Jack'south words. A spook worked and lived lonely.

"Oh, Jack! Don't exist cruel!" Ellie scolded.

"It was merely a joke," Jack replied, as if he couldn't empathise why Ellie was making so much fuss.

But Ellie was looking at me rather than Jack, and I saw her face suddenly driblet. "Oh, Tom!" she said. "This means that you won't be here when the baby'southward born. . . ."

She looked really disappointed, and it made me feel sorry that I wouldn't be at habitation to see my new niece. Mam had said that Ellie's baby was going to be a daughter, and she was never wrong almost things like that.

"I'll come back and visit but as soon as I tin can," I promised.

Ellie tried to smile, and Jack came up and rested his arm beyond my shoulders. "You'll always have your family," he said. "We'll always exist here if you need united states."

An 60 minutes later I saturday down to supper, knowing that I'd exist gone in the morning. Dad said grace as he did every evening and we all muttered "amen" except Mam. She just stared downwards at her food equally usual, waiting politely until it was over. Equally the prayer concluded, Mam gave me a little smile. It was a warm, special smile, and I don't think anyone else noticed. It fabricated me experience better.

The burn was still called-for in the grate, filling the kitchen with warmth. At the center of our large wooden table was a contumely candlestick, which had been polished until you lot could see your face in it. The candle was made of beeswax and was expensive, only Mam wouldn't allow tallow in the kitchen because of the smell. Dad made most of the decisions on the subcontract, but in some things she always got her own way.

As we tucked into our large plates of steaming hot pot, it struck me how old Dad looked this night—old and tired—and there was an expression that flickered across his face from time to time, a hint of sadness. But he brightened upwardly a bit when he and Jack started discussing the price of pork and whether or not it was the right time to send for the sus scrofa butcher.

"Better to wait another month or so," Dad said. "The price is sure to become higher."

Jack shook his head and they began to debate. Information technology was a friendly statement, the kind families often have, and I could tell that Dad was enjoying it. I didn't join in, though. All that was over for me. As Dad had told me, I was finished with farming.

Mam and Ellie were chuckling together softly. I tried to take hold of what they were proverb, but by at present Jack was in total flow, his vocalism getting louder and louder. When Mam glanced across at him, I could tell she'd had enough of his racket.

Oblivious to Mam'southward glances, and continuing to contend loudly, Jack reached across for the salt cellar and accidentally knocked it over, spilling a small cone of salt on the tabletop. Straightaway he took a pinch and threw it dorsum over his left shoulder. Information technology is an erstwhile County superstition. Past doing that you were supposed to ward off the bad luck y'all'd earned by spilling it.

"Jack, y'all don't need any salt on that anyway," Mam scolded. "It spoils a good hot pot and is an insult to the cook!"

"Sorry, Mam," Jack apologized. "Yous're right. Information technology's perfect simply as information technology is."

She gave him a smile, so nodded toward me. "Anyhow, nobody's taking any notice of Tom. That's no way to treat him on his terminal night at dwelling."

"I'm all right, Mam," I told her. "I'm happy merely to sit down hither and heed."

Mam nodded. "Well, I've got a few things to say to you. After supper stay down in the kitchen, and we'll accept a piffling talk."

And then after Jack, Ellie, and Dad had gone up to bed, I sat in a chair by the burn and waited patiently to hear what Mam had to say.

Mam wasn't a woman who made a lot of fuss; at kickoff she didn't say much, apart from explaining what she was wrapping up for me: a spare pair of trousers, three shirts, and ii pairs of good socks that had simply been darned in one case each.

I stared into the embers of the fire, tapping my feet on the flags, while Mam drew up her rocking chair and positioned it so that she was facing directly toward me. Her blackness hair was streaked with a few strands of grayness, but apart from that she looked much the same as she had when I was simply a toddler, hardly upwardly to her knees. Her optics were notwithstanding bright, and merely for her pale skin, she looked a moving-picture show of health.

"This is the concluding time we'll get to talk together for a long while," she said. "It's a big step leaving dwelling house and starting out on your own. So if there's annihilation you need to say, anything you need to ask, now'south the time to practise it."

I couldn't recall of a single question. In fact I couldn't even think. Hearing her say all that had started tears pricking backside my eyes.

The silence went on for quite a while. All that could be heard was my feet tap-tapping on the flags. Finally Mam gave a little sigh. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Has the cat got your natural language?"

I shrugged.

"Stop fidgeting, Tom, and concentrate on what I'm saying," Mam warned. "First of all, are y'all looking frontwards to tomorrow and starting your new job?"

"I'g not sure, Mam," I told her, remembering Jack's joke nearly having to buy friends. "Nobody wants to go anywhere near a spook. I'll have no friends. I'll be lonely all the time."

"Information technology won't be as bad as you call back," Mam said. "Y'all'll have your main to talk to. He'll be your teacher, and no doubtfulness he'll eventually become your friend. And yous'll be decorated all the time. Decorated learning new things. You'll have no time to feel lonely. Don't yous notice the whole matter new and heady?"

"It's exciting, but the job scares me. I desire to practise information technology, but I don't know if I can. One office of me wants to travel and meet places, but it'll exist hard non to live hither anymore. I'll miss yous all. I'll miss being at home."

"You tin can't stay here," Mam said. "Your dad's getting too old to piece of work, and come side by side winter he'due south handing the farm over to Jack. Ellie will be having her baby shortly, no doubtfulness the get-go of many; eventually there won't exist room for y'all hither. No, you lot'd ameliorate get used to it before that happens. Yous can't come home."

Her voice seemed cold and a little sharp, and to hear her speak to me similar that drove a pain deep into my chest and throat so that I could hardly breathe.

I just wanted to go to bed so, simply she had a lot to say. I'd rarely heard her utilize so many words all in 1 become.

"Y'all have a job to practice and you're going to do it," she said sternly. "And non just do information technology; you're going to practice it well. I married your dad because he was a seventh son. And I bore him six sons and so that I could have you. Seven tim

es 7, yous are, and you have the gift. Your new master'due south withal strong, merely he's some way past his all-time, and his time is finally coming to an terminate.

"For near sixty years he'southward walked the County lines doing his duty. Doing what has to be done. Shortly information technology'll be your turn. And if you won't practise it, then who will? Who'll expect after the ordinary folk? Who'll keep them from harm? Who'll make the farms, villages, and towns condom and so that women and children can walk the streets and lanes free from fear?"

I didn't know what to say, and I couldn't expect her in the center. I just fought to concur back the tears.

"I love everyone in this house," she said, her voice softening, "simply in the whole wide Canton, you're the only person who's really like me. As yet, you're but a boy who'due south yet got a lot of growing to do, but you're the seventh son of a seventh son. Yous've the gift and the forcefulness to practice what has to be washed. I know yous're going to make me proud of you.

"Well, now," Mam said, coming to her anxiety, "I'm glad that we've got that sorted out. At present off to bed with you. It's a big twenty-four hours tomorrow, and you desire to exist at your best."

She gave me a hug and a warm smile, and I tried really hard to be cheerful and smiling back, merely once up in my sleeping room I sat on the edge of my bed just staring vacantly and thinking about what Mam had told me.

My mam is well respected in the neighborhood. She knows more about plants and medicines than the local doctor, and when there is a problem with delivering a baby, the midwife e'er sends for her. Mam is an expert on what she calls breech births. Sometimes a baby tries to go born anxiety first, simply my mother is skilful at turning them while they are however in the womb. Dozens of women in the County owe their lives to her.

Anyway, that was what my dad always said, but Mam was small and she never mentioned things similar that. She but got on with what had to be done, and I knew that's what she expected of me. Then I wanted to make her proud.

Only could she really hateful that she'd only married my dad and had my 6 brothers so she could give birth to me? Information technology didn't seem possible.

After thinking things through, I went across to the window and sat in the old wicker chair for a few minutes, staring through the window, which faced north.

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