The Devil's Apprentice Read online

  Azmordis lifts it with one hand, turning and turning it so the darts of light skim to and fro across the room.

  ‘A skull,’ he says, in flat tones. ‘A jewelled skull. How... quaint.’

  Once, it was the inside of a human head. Now, every inch of bone is covered with diamonds; every gem is flawless; its value is measured in endless zeros.

  ‘Is it worth it?’ he muses. ‘Calcium covered in carbon. A pretty trinket.’

  ‘Of course I’m worth it,’ snaps the skull, attempting to toss its head – a difficult feat for something with no neck. ‘Just because I look like a table decoration from Accessorize–! It was not always thus, I can tell you. I stood on the worktop of the alchemist Ramon Lully when he discovered the Secret of Life –’

  ‘What was it?’ asks the Devil, mildly curious.

  ‘I don’t know. I was asleep. I only woke up when they came to murder him. I’ve been the prop of astrologers, actors, artists. I starred with Burbage in the first production of Hamlet – I was the concealed skull in that picture with a concealed skull. I stood behind Géricault while he painted The Raft of the Medusa. There was a basket of severed arms from the hospital under the bench and a couple of heads from the guillotine, but I had the place of honour. Gerry, I said, that hand hanging over the edge, it’s all wrong. You’ve got to do it again. He did.’

  ‘An interesting history,’ comments Azmordis, progressing from flat to dry.

  ‘Do you think I like this... this vulgar encrustation? I was a serious skull, I tell you. I had gravitas. I was with Poe when he wrote The Raven. He was groping for the mot juste – couldn’t find it – out of his brain on laudanum. Nevermore, I said. That’s the word. He scribbled it down there and then. Quoth the raven: Nevermore. I was an inspiration to men of genius. And now look at me!’

  ‘Shut up,’ says Azmordis, setting it down on the desk at the other end from the lamp.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ says the skull, ‘I’d rather...’

  ‘I do mind.’

  A silence ensues which even the skull thinks it imprudent to break.

  Presently, the Serafain who stands close by suggests: ‘It’s an amusing bauble.’

  ‘It’s all true,’ says the skull, rather sulkily. ‘I was there, I tell you. When Mother Shipton gazed into her crystal ball – when Locusta brewed her poisons – when Louis de Béchamel invented that sauce–’

  ‘A soothsayer and a poisoner may well have owned a skull, but I find it difficult to credit that any chef would have had one,’ says the Devil, more silky than sulky. ‘Except among the Aztecs.’

  ‘It wasn’t the chef,’ says the skull. ‘It was the wizard who taught him.’

  ‘Wizards teach the black, not the culinary arts,’ says the Serafain.

  ‘Not this one,’ declares the skull.

  ‘What was his name?’ the Devil inquires, on a sudden note of interest.

  ‘Bartholème de Bonhomme. He was not as other wizards. Not keen on becoming a megalomaniac or a supervillain. He busied himself producing small pleasures and small benefits for the good of mankind. Food, medicines, alcoholic beverages. Bit of a philanthropist, really. I expect he was hoping to stay sane. Most wizards don’t. I remember Zakharion–’

  ‘Bartholème de Bonhomme,’ Azmordis repeats. ‘Bartlemy Goodman. I know the man... a little. Our paths have crossed. A fat wizard who has evidently eaten too well of his own cooking.’

  ‘Wizards are never fat,’ says the Serafain, startled into contradicting his master. ‘They are gaunt and cadaverous, hook-nosed and hawk-eyed. Like Cassius, they have a lean and hungry look. It goes with the terrain.’

  ‘Nonetheless, this wizard is fat. A fat soft man with a voice as mild as milk and eyes as blue as a baby’s. A wizard of little power and less importance, or so it has always seemed.’ There is a pause, while that dark Mind is wrapped in a cloud of thought. The backchat of the skull has stirred ideas which might have been better left to lie. ‘Until now. Now, he may be the one appointed to stand against me – the wizard chosen to contest my final purpose – even he, in all his fatness and softness. Folly! Folly and futility. Who can stand against the Lord of the Dark? Only a mortal would be so rash, and so stupid. This Goodman – this good man – has been named the keeper of my house, though what he keeps within he does not even know.’

  ‘Your house?’ asks the Fellangel.

  ‘My house. The house of space and time. My house, though I can never pass the threshold, nor even see within its walls. A house of doors that has no door – a house where those who enter do not leave, and those who leave have never entered. For thousands of years men have sought to contain it: a meaningless task, since my purpose cannot be stayed, and the doorways into the vortex cannot be sealed by human hands. The house has held them long in its keeping, the chosen ones, the fortunate few. Soon, they must come to me, to fulfil their destiny – or die in the attempt. It will go ill for any who seek to stand in the way.’

  ‘This Bartlemy Goodman,’ says the seraph of Hell, ‘do you think he might... stand in the way?’

  ‘Possibly. He has the stomach for it, or at any rate, he has the stomach for something. It is a generous stomach, a stomach of noble proportion. Who knows where such a stomach may lead him?’

  ‘The fat are neither courageous nor reckless,’ the Serafain insists. ‘Daring and derring-do are for the lithe and agile. Who ever heard of a fat man in a heroic last stand?’

  ‘But he may yet block the door,’ murmurs Azmordis. ‘There has always been a watch on the house, but it is time for one of you to keep vigil there. When the few emerge, there should be a Nightwing on hand to greet them.’

  ‘These few,’ says the Fellangel, ‘the chosen few – you mean...?’

  Azmordis smiles – a smile which cannot be seen, only felt. ‘The ones who seek the position of my apprentice,’ he says. ‘My apprentice, and my successor. The fortunate few – or not so fortunate, for those who fail. But the prize... ah, the prize is beyond mortal reckoning!’

  ‘But they are mortal...’

  ‘Indeed. Only among mortals can I find those who are still young and hungry, whose spirit is new-sharpened to a lethal edge. Men have always made my most enterprising servitors. They understand Evil as werefolk cannot, and embrace it as a cause. It is something you should appreciate. You were mortal once, long ago, before you surrendered flesh and blood and soul for immortality in my service. You knew what it was to be endowed with Youth – that magical quality which mortals alone possess, and that briefly. The house has taken only the young, the most Gifted, the most apt to evil; it has severed them from love and home – if indeed they ever knew such things – snared them in a labyrinth of magic and history. To survive they have had to scheme and cheat and kill, to cast aside kindness, weakness, debilitating affections. Only the strongest, the hardest, the most cunning and the most ruthless will have lived. They have been imprisoned in the past, frozen in their own springtide – soon to come forth, whoever they are – perhaps four, or fourteen, or forty – to compete before me for the ultimate prize. When I am gone there will be a new Lord of the Dark, born mortal, raised to immortality, and who knows? under his rule – or hers – maybe the human race will learn to regret even Me.’

  The Serafain bows his head, acknowledging both Azmordis’ lordship and the lordship to follow.

  ‘Sounds like a masterplan,’ says the skull. ‘I was there, you know. I’m always there.’

  ‘Shut up,’ says the Devil. ‘Or you won’t be there next time, believe me.’

  Eade, twenty-first century

  THE ROOM WAS full of smoke. The smoke was so thick she could not see the walls, or the ceiling, or the floor; she could feel the boards under her hand, the grainy touch of old wood, but apart from that she might have been floating in a grey-yellow fog. The cloud, which should have hovered above the spellfire like a genie half way out of the bottle, had become a thick curdle of fume cramming itself into every available inch of space. The gap in its
heart was a ragged cavern-mouth, as tall as a tall man, and the picture beyond grew into a reality which threatened to swallow her own. The Circular Office, the blood-coloured carpet, the veiled portrait, the Glittering Skull... And him, a looming shadow, a face averted, a voice ocean-deep, colder than the abyss. She was no longer a spectator observing the scene, she was part of it, a ghostly imprint on another dimension. If he had looked round, he would surely have seen her. Nothing would escape that unimaginable gaze.

  She dared not breathe too loud, nor move, nor whisper an injunction. The smoke made her eyes water; mascara ran in black tears down her cheeks. She could only wait for it to be over, for the gap to close and the smoke to thin, breaking into separate vapours which oozed through the crack around the door and probed the blocked chimney. But even when the air cleared she still sat there, hugging her knees against her chest, shuddering uncontrollably. She was not brave enough for such visions; she had no strength to contain them. The fear knotted itself into her belly and would not go away.

  She knew too much.

  There was only one thing to be done. Spread it around, share her knowledge, tell someone, anyone. Pen was right – her secrets were too big to hide, too deadly to keep safe. Yet still she did not move, huddled by the fireside, dry-throated from the smoke. There was danger in Bygone House, danger on every street, danger even here, in the old empty manor – danger at the door. She heard the hinge creak in protest – a footfall too light and soft to be human – felt a warm breath on her cheek. Rigid with fright, she made a sound between a gasp and a scream.

  A rough tongue rasped along her jaw – a wet nose nudged her ear.

  She flinched and turned... and saw the dog.

  A big dog – she had forgotten how big – with long gangly legs ending in huge paws, a ragged coat, a wayward tail. His ears both lopped and cocked and his eyes were bright brown under whiskery eyebrows. He looked part lurcher, part setter, part mastiff, with a little wolf and a lot of mongrel and a trace element of Scooby Doo. He had belonged to Bartlemy for as long as Jinx could remember, which made him older than any dog should be and perhaps just a little bit magical.

  She hugged him, feeling weak with relief, mumbling: ‘Hoover... oh Hoover...’

  They called him that because of his habit of mopping up crumbs, though she had a suspicion it wasn’t really his name.

  She had never known him leave his master.

  ‘Where is he?’ she demanded, both eager and desperate. ‘Where’s Uncle Barty?’

  But the dog was alone.

  ‘You would never leave him,’ she said slowly, a different fear clutching at her heart. ‘I know you wouldn’t. But... he can’t be dead. He can’t be. The spells would have told me if he was dead... wouldn’t they?’ But the dog didn’t answer, and the magic was gone, and the gingerbread house felt empty and cold.

  When she had stopped shivering, she got up to leave, the dog at her heels.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Wishing Stone

  Beyond the Doors

  London, seventeenth century

  ‘YOU’RE DEAD,’ SAID Mags. ‘I told Big Bel. She was asking for you, hearing you’d got sick, so I said you was dead. I reckoned that was safest, what with Cullen being done in and all. You don’t want her sending the constable after you, do you? Or worse.’ She didn’t specify what was worse.

  They were sitting in the loft, she and Ghost and Cherub, sharing a stolen pie still hot from the oven (Cherub’s contribution) and a mug of stout which Mags had carried up from the tavern. Frowsy sunlight leaked through the roof-holes and the half-shuttered casement, slicing across the dim interior in narrow rays glimmering with dust. In the corner Ghost’s face lived up to his name, fever-white and wasted to hollows and shadows. The other two studied him doubtfully over mouthfuls of pie.

  ‘Did you do it?’ Mags asked abruptly. You weren’t supposed to ask, she knew that, but she couldn’t help herself. What Ghost did – or didn’t do – mattered, more than the deeds and misdeeds of anyone else she knew.

  ‘’Course he did,’ said Cherub. ‘Slit his froat with that wicked little knife, didn’t he? Wickedest knife I ever saw. Pops out quicker’n a tippler’s pimple. I reckon that knife could’ve done it all on its own.’

  ‘Ghost’s not strong enough,’ Mags insisted.

  ‘Hate makes you strong,’ said Ghost, from the corner.

  He remembered Cullen’s cackling laugh, and how he had mocked the Lost Boys, tossed in the dead cart like yesterday’s rubbish.

  Mags didn’t say any more.

  Ghost kept to the loft for the next week or so, regaining health and strength, always resilient for all his apparent fragility. Cherub stole for both of them, having no other loyalties to cling to, and Mags came when she could, for all her doubts, but no one else knew he still lived, and the business of the city – his city – stumbled on without him. Cherub might have had trouble with other gangs, but the epidemic had decimated them all; Dutch Harry down by the river was said to have run away to sea, and more than half the boys who had infested every alley and tenement were dead. Plague always took the poor and undernourished first. Summer hung on well past its time, dragging its feet; the jungle of backstreets and high streets, houses and hovels stewed in the last of the heat. The death-smell hung over all, so much a part of the air that even Ghost no longer noticed it.

  Twice or three times Cherub reported seeing Big Belinda out on the streets, bustling along in her flounces and her curls, evidently untroubled by any need for a bodyguard. Presumably she believed what Mags had told her; at any rate, she did not seem disturbed by Cullen’s death. ‘It ain’t as if ’e was well liked,’ Cherub remarked, with airy understatement; anyone could have done it, particularly in the feckless atmosphere of the epidemic, where life was cheap, and short, and death came swiftly to the unlucky or the unwary. The one certainty, Ghost thought, was that Big Belinda herself would survive, as she always did, impervious alike to ague and plague, infection and affliction, feeding off others’ misery and misfortune, fattened off the lean of the land. Nothing touched Big Belinda. Her newest ringlets were golden as guineas and the rouge on her cheeks was as red as the roses that still bloomed in the king’s garden, and when she walked down the street even Death stepped around her – or so they said.

  ‘That wicked little knife o’ yourn ain’t sharp enough for her,’ Cherub averred. ‘Her corsets are made of armour-plating and the flab on her’s tougher’n raw suet. You’d need a knife sharpened by the Devil himself to cut through it.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Ghost.

  One evening, with a change of clothes Cherub had pinched for him and his face and hair dirtied to the colour of dust, Ghost shinned down from the loft into Running Lane. The sun had sunk behind the roofline and the light was fading; Ghost disappeared into the gloaming like a shadow among shadows. Even Mags, crossing into the tavern, did not see him, nor did he call to her. He felt as if the fever had made him not only thinner but somehow less solid, a transparent being who only existed on the borders of reality, half in some other dimension of delirium or dream. The red-eyed spectres who had watched over him in his malady were gone, but occasionally he fancied he saw a wingtip flicking round a corner, or a movement on the edge of sight, too swift or too furtive to pin down. His senses seemed to be heightened: he both heard and saw more clearly, and beyond the all-pervasive death-smell his nose picked up every nuance of the city odours. Yet for all his imagined lack of substance, he himself felt intensely real, more alive than ever before; it was the world around him which appeared insubstantial, a dreamworld peopled with phantoms. Even those he knew best, Cherub and Mags, existed at one remove, as if observed through a distant lens. He wondered if this was what it was like to be a ghost – the spirit lives on while everything around it dies, dwindling into dimness and shades.

  Death was his Gift. He did not know it with his mind but he was beginning to feel it in his heart, now most of those he had loved were gone, and rumou
r named him dead, and he was left haunting his own life like a visitant, passionless and chill.

  He saw Big Belinda in Porkpie Street, turning the corner into Goldfinger Lane. It was only a glimpse but he knew her at once, more by intuition than sight, and he followed her immediately, without hesitation or thought. She was wearing her newest curls and a hat adorned with what appeared to be an entire dead cockerel; with her skirts kilted up to avoid the garbage she resembled a large plum-coloured galleon, bulging and billowing though there was little wind, sailing the streets like a flagship while lesser craft scurried out of her way. She moved quickly for all her bulk, but Ghost was quicker, flitting from shadow to shadow, keeping under cover in case she should turn around. But she never did. They went by Tight Street and Trouser Alley, by Crooked Way and Sallow Way, by Bareknuckle Court and Blazonbrass Crescent. In a place called Close Shave Alley she stopped by the door of what seemed to be a barber’s and knocked twice. The door opened, and in the gap Ghost saw a dark looming figure, too dark for the evening gloom. The Duke’s bodyguard. Big Belinda went inside and the door shut behind her.

  Ghost waited in growing frustration. The door was closed and the single window shrouded in curtain or blind; there was no way he could eavesdrop or peer through a chink. He wondered about going round the back, but in such an alley a shop would normally have only a tiny yard, walled in, with no means of egress. When Big Belinda didn’t re-emerge he approached the door and laid an ear to the panels, but he could hear no sound of movement inside, no murmur of speech. Eventually, curiosity outweighing risk, he tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open, peered through the gap. Went in.

  The shop was empty. The barber, if there was one, might have died or fled the city: there was no sign of occupancy. Ghost gazed round with dilating eyes, distinguishing little in the semi-darkness. The only light in the room was a thin sliver surrounding the door to what must be the basement or cellar. Once again Ghost paused to listen, but everything was quiet. He pulled the door ajar, descended the stair. At the bottom a lamp stood on an upended barrel, showing a clutter of empty boxes and bottles and a hole, partially filled in, which from the smell had been used as a midden. Ghost, long accustomed to such odours, barely wrinkled his nose. He was staring at the farther wall. There was another door, an underground door, a door that ought to go nowhere – a thick solid door of some dark wood like the door of a dungeon – a door that had no place in the basement of a poky barber’s shop – incongruous, impassable, inviting.