The Master and the Moth

The Master and the Moth

By

Sally Tyrie

Copyright © 2013 Sally Tyrie

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

For my dear son, Harris Alfie

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One Warts, Stubble, Boils and Trouble

Chapter Two The Bangle of Sight

Chapter Three The Great-Grandmother Clock Strikes Midnight

Chapter Four Sand Devils

Chapter Five The White Witches

Chapter Six Mt Cloud Piercer

Chapter Seven The Elemental Dragons

Chapter Eight Witch Hunts

Chapter Nine Blood Embezzlement

Chapter Ten Malakin's Lamp

Chapter Eleven The Mirrored Pool

Chapter Twelve Jezebel's Hovel

Chapter Thirteen Widows' Wake

Chapter Fourteen The Crooked Cauldron

Chapter Fifteen Malakin's Lifeline

Chapter Sixteen A Pact for the Past

Chapter Seventeen Skulduggery by Lantern Light

Chapter Eighteen Flight in the Night

Chapter Nineteen Raven's Leap

Chapter Twenty Graveyard Flats and Beyond

Prologue

A great-grandmother clock stood backed up against a stalactite, its facade resplendent in the clandestine glow cast by a lone candle. At five feet tall and elaborately carved from a magnificent piece of cherry heartwood, it was the witches' pride and joy. Tracking the moon cycle, two bat-shaped brass pendulums swung back and forth within their tower, keeping perfect time.

All of a sudden there was a loud whirr of machinery followed by a pall of silence as if the clock were deliberating its next course of action, and then its resident ghoul howled … thirteen times. The clock had struck thirteen. The hags turned to one another with meaningful stares, anything past twelve meant only one thing … with the ghoul's howls still echoing in their ears the five White Witches, cloaked in robes of grey, turned to squint down five alarmingly wart-festooned noses at the image rippling the surface of the mirrored pool before them …

In a castle far away the old king reluctantly breathed his last. Apart from the witches no one saw the ghostly-grey silhouette slip out of his body and take a final solitary stroll about the darkened corridors. The old king paused, glancing over his shoulder as he went, he knew this little jaunt to be illicit, and yet still his stride went unchecked. And then he felt it, the draining pull of Graveyard Flats. His time was up. But perhaps better to check first? Fumbling for his timepiece, his fingers closed on thin air as his hand drifted through where he was sure his chest should have been. He pursed his lips, yes, he'd forgotten, it had quite slipped his mind, he was dead wasn't he. Wearing a frown of frustration, he stepped through a yard thick turret wall and without further ado turned to walk the flats themselves, as indeed one day must all. And, as he did so, the first of the ice began to melt about his Apprentice.

Emery was cold, so very cold. For him, time had stood still … but no more. Blinking back a film of water he saw for the first time the small cave, the pool, the glacier, and around him the great puddles of meltwater seeping into the sand. A faint recollection stirred in his mind, from beyond the mists of confusion he knew what he must do, and pulling his cloak around him he moved down the beach as he went in search of the wailing banshee, Muriel …

To the witches' fury, the mirrored pool rippled over, the image distorting, preventing even their prying eyes from seeing. Jostling impatiently at its shore, their crooked grey hats bobbing overhead, they joined hands waiting for the water to settle, as they knew eventually it would …

Emery sat in the centre of a small island of rocks, a surrounding pool lapping its shore. The deed would soon be done, there was another now to take his place; Emery's successor alone could hear the banshee's wail, and he had answered her call, coming quickly to the mountain. Beneath Emery, and to no one's eyes but her own, in the very heart of Mt Cloud Piercer itself, Muriel sealed his Apprentice in a frosted sheet of ice. The banshee worked wonders with water, she had done herself proud given her phobia of ice, most unusual, all things considered, given a banshee's skills in that field.

He turned his gaze to watch as she spiralled, like a wisp of smoke, out of the shaft at his feet. Her job done, she drifted with a distinct aura of bad-attitude towards her pool where she vanished to skulk beneath the surface, her wail lingering in her wake.

Emery sat on the rocks awhile, wondering who his Apprentice might be. He shrugged, unable to return to the heart of the mountain, he himself would never know, for not until his own death would his Apprentice return to this world. He shivered, suddenly aware of the chill and damp permeating the air. And then he stood, as finally, he made his way to take up his role as Guardian of Fate.

Chapter One

Warts, Stubble, Boils and Trouble

It would soon be light, Jojo had overslept. He propped himself up on an elbow and looked blearily around the perfectly round room. Spotting Matterhorn silhouetted against the window he chuckled; Matterhorn had refused to go to bed last night, instead professing the need to employ his self-proclaimed aptitude for guard duties, but was now fast asleep on the windowsill, his delicate wings folded flat along his back.

Jojo threw back the covers and swung his legs out of bed, the wooden floorboards cool beneath his bare feet. Tiptoeing towards the sleeping Matterhorn he leant in, took a deep breath of air and blew with all his might.

Matterhorn bolted to attention, his eyes widening with surprise, his short, fuzzy hair standing on end, then noticing his master doubled over in laughter, he recovered his composure and blinked in Jojo's general direction.

I was just resting my eyes.

Matterhorn, if you were any more a'kip you'd have been dead, Jojo joked. And besides, there was no need for caution, you would've done better to get some sleep, we've a long journey ahead of us.

Matterhorn remained silent, scowling as he watched Jojo pull on his boots and wrap his cloak around himself.

Ready?

The moth, still peeved, fluttered to his shoulder in answer.

Jojo pulled the door open and stepped onto the boardwalk outside, the air was crisp and cold, and their breath misted before them. He put his fingers to his lips and whistled, then closed his eyes, Microskopping so that Matterhorn, who had settled at his feet, now stood almost to his kneecaps, and the trees of Grubdale crowded taller above him.

A shadowy form dipped out of the encroaching darkness and landed next to them.

We leave now, Jaborandi.

The bat arched her back as Jojo stroked her leathery wings and scratched behind her neck.

It had been a long night for the Flier; he had worried much, and slept little. He didn't want to alarm Matterhorn, but there had been talk that the Morphin Servina was on the move again. And where Servina went, the Black Witches would not be far behind.

Servina, queen of van Tristaen's Land in all but name … guardian to her nephew, the king-in-waiting. Following her sister Zahara's untimely demise, Servina had promptly seen to it that she herself was sworn in as governor of van Tristaen's Land and assumed residence of the royal quarters at Cawdor Castle (that she referred to herself as queen was a contention with which few argued), an affair which had overflowed with all the pomp and ceremony that could be mustered. And ever since Servina's coronation of sorts, van Tristaen's Land was in a state of despair … for hers was a cold and unforgiving rule.

Jojo peered upwards and shuddered. The trees huddled together, thick and dark.

We'll take a different route, you can never be too careful.

He referred to the trees themselves, for the bending boughs gave off the distinct impression they watched him. A curtain of black clouded the forest canopy, as if it could read his thoughts.

Jojo swung his leg over Jaborandi, waiting for the moth to settle between his knees, pulled his cloak around them both and signalled Jaborandi to set off. The bat darted and dodged between the tightly packed trees, quickly reaching the edge of the forest.

A low, wet, seasonal fog smothered the surrounding countryside. They could barely make out the lone oak tree, shrouded in steaming sheets of grey, standing damply in the middle of a recently ploughed field. To the west, a row of terraced houses backed against a bordering hawthorn hedge. Soft orange puddles of light twinkled warmly from behind windowpanes against an otherwise drab day.

Jaborandi altered course, unfazed in the disorientating mist.

From the oak tree, a pair of eyes levelled on them. Unnoticed, a large black bird perched amongst the foliage of an upper bough. It watched as they slipped like a silhouette from the fringes of the forest, its steel-like gaze following them until they were lost to the gathering gloom.

The laboured slap of wings filled the air as a raven launched into the sky like the ghostly shadow of death, following.

Jaborandi slowed with exhaustion. They had left the fog-clad plains far behind and were in a valley flying steadily towards Mt Cloud Piercer. Dusk was approaching and the air was filled with the promise of night.

It had been a long day. As they had travelled further south the mist had lifted and the sun had unleashed a ferocious heat; Jojo's eyes ached from its glare, bright and unrelenting against an unending canvas of blue. But now, as darkness fell, Jojo squinted through the gloom and stiffened. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen a blurred movement … and another. Using his knees he guided Jaborandi to a halt in the hidden shade of a boulder bordering an inky-black rock pool.

The raven wheeled high above, searching. It had lost them. It spied a craggy overhang and plummeted towards it, landing in a flurry of feathers. It ruffled its plumage and stretched out its wings, briefly admiring its own violet sheen, before craning its neck towards the snaking valley below. Its coal-like gaze fixed on a rock pool where the swirling river widened, serene and still, before disappearing with a rush of frothing water over a drop at the far side. Tracing the river up-valley it focused on a group of witches. Its eyes narrowed and flicked back towards the rock pool. There was no sign of them, they had vanished.

Three pairs of eyes blinked out of the darkness. The only sound above the distant roar of the waterfall was the stifled panting of Jaborandi.

What was it? asked Matterhorn groggily, who had moments ago been in the safe clutches of one of his many warm and untroubled sleeps.

Witches. I saw a movement in the air about us, I wasn't sure, but then the next one — Jojo lowered his voice — it was a witch, and where one witch goes the coven goes. The others will be nearby.

It took little imagination to realise that witches on the move so far from the realms of Riftswood, would be Black Witches, for the White Witches rarely left the lands of the north, and certainly never travelled this far south. But why were they in the Anchallach mountains?

Black Witches, now under Servina's command of sorts, roamed wild and free, practising the Dark Crafts openly and threateningly, yet it was not this which made them so feared, nor was it their cruel and unforgiving nature … it was quite simply that they had no sense of morality, there wasn't a shred of decency or honour, to be found amongst them. And it made them unpredictable.

The Black Witches consisted of three covens, three covens of nine, nine depraved and foul hags. It has to be said, there was a distinct lack of love between the covens, in fact, if anything, there was a prevalence of envy and greed, for witches tended to hanker after what another had, their covetous eyes constantly on the roam. It didn't stop there for, in the covens themselves, bickering and brawling was rife, as each witch scrabbled to outmanoeuvre the next in an attempt to secure her own position. Yet the very essence of the coven runs through a witch's blood, and when it counts, they come together, to move as one.

I'll find out what they're after, mouthed Matterhorn over his wingtip as he slipped from the shade of their shelter.

Jojo stared after him, watching until long after the moth had melted into the gloom. He knew Matterhorn could look after himself, but nevertheless, it disconcerted him to think of his tiny Messenger, so bold and brave, flittering towards a coven of witches, Black Witches no less.

Matterhorn, barely past his third moth year, had an endearingly youthful spirit, counteracted, some might argue, by a propensity to put in long hours of devotion to sleep.

Matterhorn glanced left and right, staring through the gathering twilight. The sun was almost set, the sky on fire, and the valley cast in long dusky shadows. He was just about to give in when he spotted them a hundred yards upriver. They sat in a circle beneath a willow tree at the edge of the riverbank. In their midst, silhouetted against the blazing skyline, a figure knelt over a newly kindled fire.

Matterhorn glided towards them. Holding his breath, he alighted in the highest branches of the tree under which they huddled. He peeped through the leaves out across the river and gasped in horror as he made out the shape of a black-caped woman, bent low over a broomstick as she hurtled across the water towards him. He clamped his eyes shut. The air whistled as she passed inches above the tree and then, with a flourish, she turned and swooped groundwards, the earth trembling as she landed in a flurry of cloak.

Matterhorn gulped, so it was true, the Black Witches had mastered the art of crossing running water, no doubt with the help of their Dark Crafts. The moth had always found it comforting to know that running water provided safety of sorts when it came to witches, and this now, it seemed, turned out to be false hope. Disheartened, he peered through the branches to the group below, his eyes smarting as he gagged on their acrid stench.

What did you catch? snapped one, her voice rasping, like a rusty saw which had been left out in the rain too long.

A boar, said the newcomer, tossing it at her feet, its two bloodied tusks glinting in the firelight.

Another picked it up, took it to the water's edge and proceeded to skin and gut it, then returning to the fire, expertly strung it out across some spliced wood.

One by one the witches dropped off to sleep, hunched in a ring around the dancing warmth of the flames. One remained awake, and she was engrossed in the evidently delightful task of squeezing what appeared to be an endless supply of clotted green pus which oozed from a boil that bulged at her knuckles. Occasionally she rose to add more wood to the fire and to turn the steadily roasting boar.

Matterhorn yawned, the flames were hypnotic, the heat comforting. He felt woozy, his eyelids drooped. He flicked them open abruptly. I must stay awake, he chided himself, full of good intention. He had never been so close to witches before, and despite the immediate sense of terror that had initially overwhelmed him, he had to admit he was rather enjoying his mission, and, although he said so himself, he fancied himself as something of an expert in matters concerning espionage.

He counted the witches; there were nine, the full coven. Their malodorous stench lingered in the air; he tried to ignore it and instead turned his attention to the sleeping witches. In each of their laps sat a cockroach, gleaming glossy-brown in the firelight. The witch on fire duty muttered to her cockroach as she tapped her fingernail against its hard-shelled back. It hissed idly, basking with content. In a valiant attempt to stay awake, Matterhorn studied the flames flickering orange and red in a sea of black, but, serenaded from below by a cacophony of wheezing and snoring, his eyelids soon slung shut and he slept.

The raven had not seen the small moth flutter up the river. Its head swivelled left and right as it surveyed the valley for any movement; seeing nothing, its focus wandered back to the gaggle of witches.

A full moon shone high overhead, fat and silver in a halo of its own aura. A bright smattering of stars twinkled merrily to themselves, a powdered streak across the midnight-blue sky.

The peace of the evening was disturbed by a rustle from the willow tree as a bat landed in its uppermost branches.

What was that? rasped a witch between a mouthful of entrails. Having awoken early, and fed up of waiting for their meal to roast, she was snacking on the less-than-savoury insides of the boar.

Matterhorn came to with a start, realising to his dismay that he had nodded off. Annoyed with himself, he squinted through the foliage and shuddered in alarm to find five disturbingly-grotesque faces peering upwards. He backed against the tree trunk and ducked under a leaf. After what he judged to be a safe period of time, he looked out, gasping in surprise to see Jojo lying flat across a nearby branch, with Jaborandi roosting three feet overhead. Jojo touched his finger to his lips.

After what felt like an eternity waiting for Matterhorn to return, Jojo had grown more and more anxious as he began imagining all manner of horrors that might have happened to his beloved moth. As the moon had tracked overhead, progressing at a slow and steady pace through the night sky, he set off in search of him.

A bat, said one of the witches after a time, her eagle-eyed gaze alighting on the small cloaked form of Jaborandi. Agnes had a taste for bats, considering the leathery wings an especial delicacy. Hoiking up her skirts with deliberation she made for the tree.

Jaborandi heard the notes of ecstasy that laced the witch's shout of discovery; she didn't consider herself a meal and decided to keep a very wary eye on proceedings.

A holler went up from near the circle of fire; the boar had cooked to a witch's idea of perfection (the meat charred well past the point of cremation on the outside, yet alarmingly bloody within) and the witch who had supplied the kill was busy getting to work on it. Stuffing a leg in her mouth, she tore at the stringy meat, some of which hung from her yellowed teeth. With their attention diverted, the witch Jojo presumed to be the leader snatched at it next. She twisted off a hind leg with a satisfying rip of juicy flesh and lobbed the disfigured remnants of the carcass into the circle. Slurping and grunting, she gnawed at the browned flesh, the fat dripping from her chin, flecks of meat catching in her stubble, and watched as the coven squabbled between themselves over the remains.

The bat was all but forgotten, and with the meat finished, the witches sat back with swollen stomachs, licking and smacking their lips.

At the sound of furious clicking, Jojo turned his gaze to the periphery of the rabble, where nine cockroaches battled it out over a rib bone. With the bone soon bare and glistening alabaster white, they flew back to their mistresses, settling with faint plops in their laps.

I've had enough, complained one toothily. We've been combing these wretched hills for months now and still there's no sign of him.

If he even exists, said another. As she spoke she thrust a knobbly nose into their midst and leered at her companions — in the boughs overhead, all three onlookers shuddered with revulsion — a large wart drooped from her chin, bristling with thick greying hairs, and as she shook her head it wobbled violently.

Who's to say she hasn't sent us on a fool's errand? whinged yet another.

You would do well to shut your trap and not speak out against Her Highness. Viperia's eyes narrowed, shrivelling into a field of wrinkles; it would not do to have a Black Witch, a member of her coven no less, question Servina's powers.

I'd like to know why she thinks we're even hunting in the right place, how does she know the Apprentice lies in the Anchallachs? snorted the first one.

Indeed, Jojo thought, he too would very much like to know the answer to that.

Recently promoted to Chief-Protector, Jojo oversaw a small band of Fliers who guarded over Emery's Apprentice, the Apprentice who was frozen in a time and space beyond their own, and who, on Emery's death, would return to this world to take his place as Fate's Guardian.

Enough, barked their leader. Slouching under rounded shoulders, Viperia closed her hand around a glass vial that hung from a tarnished chain at her neck.

The others dutifully lowered their heads.

The Apprentice exists if she says so. We'll find him.

And what then? asked one, displaying a mouth crammed full with decomposing teeth.

Viperia tweaked a long, fine hair which protruded from her nostril. She'll travel to the north, to Riftswood. She'll round up the White Witches. She'll banish them to Slandic, to the prison in the ice, as she promised us. We'll reclaim our territory, the land we lost!

What'll she do with him, Viperia? whispered one with bated breath.

The Apprentice? Their leader shrugged. She'll kill him, but what's it to us, we'll have Riftswood.

This explained why the witches were in the area, Jojo thought to himself. Servina clearly believed that with their knowledge of the Dark Crafts the witches could get to the Apprentice, and no doubt it was she who had also provided them with their information on the Apprentice's likely whereabouts, but how was it she had come to be so well informed? And what exactly did she hope to achieve by killing him?

And then the whole horror of the witches' revelation dawned on him … as the Apprentice's slayer she would become his successor and Fate would be hers.

Jojo awoke from his reverie to calls of: Riftswood, our land, as the witches celebrated their triumph.

The northern lands of Riftswood, lying outside the bounds of Fate, had been in the witches' hands for generations. They had traded its deeds for gold, and as far as they were concerned, it was a good price, for its plains were clad in constant darkness of which they so craved. Viperia and her sisters, banished from its barren lands by their cousins the White Witches, had struggled to reclaim any 'rights' to Riftswood, their conniving thwarted at every warped twist and turn. However despite history indicating otherwise, Viperia had a feeling that this year would be her year, and she intended to rejoice in every last minute of her triumph.

Viperia nearly choked on a smirk, our land indeed, it would be hers, and hers alone. A vision of Verbena and Virosa, her sisters and archrivals, the leaders of the other two covens, drifted into the furthest recesses of her grey matter, like woodworm. It was quite apparent, even to her, that she, Viperia, was the most accomplished of the three leaders, the craftiest and the worldly-wisest. And, was it not she, being the eldest of all three, who could claim the strongest bloodline to the most celebrated of witches, Vercranz, leader of the witches when there was but one coven alone. And so it would again be, one coven, one leader … and she, Viperia, would take her rightful place on the throne of Riftswood (that there wasn't any throne at all seemed to have escaped her notice, it had been so often imagined that it was as real to her as the broomstick she rode upon).

Viperia broke off from her delusion of greatness as one of her coven began to speak.

Well, I don't think we should just hand over the Apprentice. We should hide him and threaten to keep him until she's honoured her part of the bargain — the witch who had spoken paused to angle the brim of her hat in such a way that it gave her an air of importance — once we've got Riftswood back, then, and only then, should we hand him over.

The others shouted their agreement.

Matterhorn observed the witches from his perch, their faces etched in firelight which sought to over-emphasise their already disproportionate features. The little moth flinched with uneasiness. Perhaps this espionage business wasn't what it was made out to be, not after a couple of hours trapped in a tree above a gaggle of rotten old witches.

Viperia pulled her hat lower on her head, shading her face, and glowered pointedly around the gathering at each witch in turn. She held out her hand to silence them, her dirt-rimmed nails curling out before her.

Don't take me for a fool, Agnes. Viperia made a mental note to herself of the witch who dared to undermine her intelligence. I've already plotted to take him north. We'll go into hiding at the boundaries of Riftswood, within the petrified forest itself … until Servina honours her promise to us. She threw her head back, shrieking in a jaundiced-yellow toothy grimace.

Her coven joined in, hooting in glee.

Viperia rose to her feet, plopped her cockroach into her pocket and picked up her broomstick. The night's still young. We'll comb this valley till sunrise, inside and out. We meet at the valley yonder, towards Mt Cloud Piercer. She jutted her chin up-valley. We'll sleep the day out underground in the caves of Raven's Leap.

She wheeled on Agnes. You'll hunt for us tomorrow, as dawn breaks, a bit of sunlight might teach you to curb your tongue. With that she ran forward a few paces, bent her knees and thrust herself from the ground amid faint clouds of dust, holding the broomstick beneath her. She shot upwards, like a sneeze, before jerking to a halt to hover twenty yards above their heads with her cloak billowing in the cold, impatient wind.

The remaining witches scrambled to their feet. There were eight stomps as they propelled off from the ground and a whizzing and whooshing sounded above the gusting air as they climbed upwards. Turning as one, the coven hunched forwards over their besoms and headed southwest, streaking, like smoke, across the broad and fat moon.

The three, left alone in the tree, quivered as one.

Jojo reeled, not so much at the revelation that the witches sought the Apprentice, but over the alarming issue that they closed in on their target however unwittingly they did so. He had to get to Mt Cloud Piercer, and fast.

He shivered at the thought of travelling abroad with witches on the prowl, for theirs was a brutal reputation. They came and went as silently as misted breath on a windowpane … and their attacks … he had heard firsthand how Emery came to have his witch-mark.

He turned to his Aero-servant. Can you travel much further tonight?

Jaborandi nodded. She was exhausted and her wings ached, but determined she would fly until she dropped from the sky with tiredness.

A pair of black eyes blinked from high up the craggy valley side. It didn't see them, cruising low against the ground. Long after, and left alone, it spread its wings and lunged from its post, before soaring in high, wide loops, raking the valley with impeccable vision. As the last vestiges of night drained into dawn in an extravagant display of fiery red clouds parading a washed out pink sky, the raven turned with a guttural croak, weary and bedraggled, and headed north, to Cawdor.

Chapter Two

The Bangle of Sight

The rock face rose out of the crashing waves, forbidding and dark, and stretched in a craggy, vertical outline to the grassy cliff top some hundred yards above. On the lower reaches shiny mussels clung in packed purple clusters. Higher up, a thin, damp moss smattered grey outcrops of rocks, concealing clutches of eggs nestled amongst dried seaweed and feathers.

The cave was hidden halfway up, concealed from above by the natural jutting overhang of the rock face. From below the narrow entrance looked nothing more than a shadowy fissure. Inside, a small fire crackled cosily, its hidden light smoking playfully across the walls. The familiar roar of the sea rolled through the entrance, a constant grumble.

Towards the opening, dried bunches of lavender and heather hung in rows of blue and purple and pink, their delicate scent drifting in the air. In the shade of the back wall cured fish and meats dried out on racks, and underneath these, stacked three high, were baskets filled with dried herbs and grains, vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds. To the left of the cave a generous bed of dried heather and soft woollen blankets lay upon a naturally raised platform of rock. Against the opposite wall, packed from floor to ceiling, were yet more baskets, each filled with supple leather pouches containing medicinal powders.

Amarice huddled close to the fire, her hooded blue eyes staring into the flames, the cold whites of her eyes, like snow. Her right eye stared unmoving, glazed and indifferent, whilst her left eye roved the inferno, steadily searching. The sputter of the smouldering brushwood dimmed into silence as her eyeballs lolled into her head, leaving the whites of her eyes luminescent by the firelight …

They were coming. She could hear the distant thundering of galloping hooves on rock. They moved in unison, hunched low over their midnight horses, their long capes whipping out behind them. They stopped at the edge of a ravine, their horses kneading the ground, sparks striking beneath their hooves. The black horses, muscles etched in moonlight, reared up. Their hooves pawed the air. Streams of mist clouded from their nostrils. The men craned forwards, faces