Fury of the Seventh Son (Book 13) by Joseph Delaney Page B

took all my willpower to stop myself from going directly to the tower and calling out a challenge.
    After all, what would that achieve? I would get no chance to fight the stranger and take Alice away. Most likely I would lose my life on the steps—or be taken prisoner.
    I paced up and down until, after a while, my anger subsided, and I began to think about the situation and what it meant.
    Was the tall stranger the mage Lukrasta? I had no way of knowing because I had never seen him. But he had put his arm round Alice and seemed to be controlling her. He was tall, powerful, and imposing, and there had been an arrogance in his expression. I felt certain it was him.
    In my head I began to work through the steps of what had happened. It seemed to me that, with the aid of Grimalkin, Alice had prepared to use the Doomdryte .
    Lukrasta was supposed to be dead, having failed to complete the ritual successfully. But somehow he was here, and had enchanted Grimalkin so that she had been unable to repel a simultaneous coordinated attack by hordes of witches. Afterward, she’d been in no condition to give a coherent and detailed account of events, but I felt I could now piece together what might have happened.
    Perhaps Lukrasta had used dark magic to control Alice and bring her to this tower? If he could overpower Grimalkin, I was sure he could do the same to Alice. She was not in her right mind. She was no longer in possession of her free will. That’s what I told myself. Perhaps she’d had no choice but to kiss him. . . .
    That thought made me feel better. But it still did not tell me what I might do about the situation.
    I tried to sleep, but I was raging inside and was still wide awake when the sun came up.
    I felt sick inside, anything but hungry, but I went through the motions and set my traps anyway. Suddenly I remembered what my master had always believed—that it was helpful to fast before facing the dark. Well, this was surely my biggest challenge yet. I should keep up my strength for whatever lay ahead, but I would only nibble on some cheese.
    I wondered again how I might get into the tower. Storming the front entrance was impossible. But could I climb up to the balcony and gain access through the smaller door?
    If, despite the odds, I managed to get inside, what would my priority be? It had to be the retrieval of the Fiend’s head. But what about Alice? How could I just leave her there in the power of that monster?
    Cautiously I moved through the trees and approached the tower, climbing a little way up the hill on which it was built. I stared up at it. The crevices between the stones might afford hand- and footholds. But it would be difficult and very risky. The base was surrounded by boulders and scree. A fall from any but the lower sections of the wall would result in death or serious injury.
    Chastened, I retreated down the slope and returned to my original position. There I thought about the stranger again, remembering his arm round Alice, the way they had kissed. . . . Try as I might, I could not force the image from my mind. If it was Lukrasta, he was a powerful, dangerous mage. The Spook’s Bestiary claimed that he had died while attempting the ritual, but it seemed that he had instead completed it.
    This was why he had been able to appear before Alice and Grimalkin, taking them by surprise. His power was too terrible to contemplate.
    He would have immortality, invulnerability, and godlike powers.
    Just after noon I saw a party of witches climbing the track toward the tower. They were on foot, over a score of them, and they had a cart with them. They were making slow progress—the cart’s wheels kept getting stuck in the mud, and each time they had to lift it clear.
    The nearer they came, the more puzzled I became. The cart was being pulled by a team of six dray horses, which seemed a lot. Usually four big horses were sufficient to manage the heaviest loads of coal, stone,