While Thorne was guarding the tunnels and Slake was up on the battlements keeping watch, I decided to talk to the Fiend once more. My intention was to exert some pressure on him and make our escape from the tower more certain, so I pulled the head out of the leather sack and placed it on a low table. Then, after I had removed the apple and thorns, I sat down cross-legged before it so that our faces were at the same height.
‘If you are able, speak to your servants now. Tell them to go! If they do not leave the wood, I will take your remaining eye.’
‘What is evil?’ asked the Fiend, disregarding what I had said completely.
‘You tell me!’ I retorted. ‘You are the one who should know!’
The mouth smirked, revealing the stumps of broken teeth. ‘The only evil is to deny yourself what you really want,’ he replied. ‘Thus I do no evil because I always impose my will upon others. I always take what I want!’
‘You twist everything,’ I accused him. ‘No wonder they call you the Father of Lies.’
‘What is better – to use one’s power to the very limit and test oneself, or to restrain one’s natural urges?’ he demanded. ‘It is better to do the former, to expand and grow in the doing. And what of you, Grimalkin? What is the difference between you and me? That is what you practise too!’
I shook my head. ‘I like to test myself and grow in strength and skill, but not at the expense of the weak. You have always hurt others just for the pleasure it gives you. What is the pleasure in that – to hurt those unable to defend themselves?’
‘It is the greatest pleasure of all!’ cried the Fiend.
There was one question that I had never asked him because I found it very difficult to put into words. But I asked it now, emotion constricting my throat so severely that I barely managed to speak audibly. ‘Why did you kill my child?’ I demanded, grief threatening to overwhelm me.
‘Our child, Grimalkin! Our child! I did it because I could. I also did it to hurt you! I did it because I could not suffer it to live! Grown to manhood, that child would have become my deadly enemy, and a dangerous one too. But now another has replaced him – the boy called Thomas Ward. I will destroy him as well. I cannot allow him to become a man. He must die too, just like your child. Firstly, I will do it because I can! Secondly, to prevent him destroying me. Thirdly, to hurt you, Grimalkin. Because without him your last hope of revenge will be gone!’
Without another word I stuffed the apple and thorns into the ugly mouth and pushed him back into the sack. I was shaking with anger.
Later, Thorne and I both dipped into the books in the large trunk but discovered nothing of any direct use. I did read something written on a single sheet of paper – Tom’s mother’s account of how she had hobbled the Fiend. But, unlike the faded ink of the other notebooks, this seemed to have been written very recently – surely it could not be her hand?
The Dark Lord wished that I return to his fold and make obeisance to him once more. For a long time I resisted, while taking regular counsel from my friends and supporters. Some advised that I bear his child, the means used by witches to be rid of him for ever. But even the thought was abhorrent to me.
At the time I was tormented by a decision that I must soon make. Enemies had seized me, taking me by surprise. I was bound with a silver chain and nailed to a rock so that at dawn the sun’s fierce rays would destroy me. I was rescued by a sailor, John Ward, who shielded me from the sun and freed me from the silver chain.
Later we took refuge in my house, and it soon became clear that my rescuer had feelings for me. I was grateful for what he had done, but he was a mere human and I felt no great physical attraction to him. However, when I learned that he was the seventh son of his father, a plan began to take shape within my mind. If I were to bear him sons, the seventh would have special powers when dealing with the dark. Not only that: the child would carry some of my attributes, gifts that would augment his other powers. Thus, this child might one day have the ability to destroy the Fiend. It was not easy to decide what to do. Bearing his seventh child might give me the means to finally destroy my enemy. Yet John Ward was just a poor sailor. He came from farming stock. Even if I bought him a farm of his own, I would still have to live that life with him, the stench of the farmyard forever in my nostrils.
My sisters’ counsel was that I kill him or give him to them. I refused because I owed him my life. The choice was between turning him out of my house so he could find a ship to take him home, or returning with him.
But to make the second option a possibility, I first had to hobble my enemy, the Fiend. This I did by subterfuge. I arranged a meeting on the Feast of Lammas – just the Fiend and me. After choosing my location carefully, I built a large bonfire, and at midnight made the necessary invocation to bring him temporarily into our world.
He appeared right in the midst of the flames, and I bowed to him and made what seemed like obeisance – but I was already muttering the words of a powerful spell and I had the two sacred objects in my hand.
As I read this account, it seemed to me that Zenobia had hated the Fiend as much as I did and had taken a risk similar to mine when she had summoned him. It had been good to fight beside her in Greece. And now, although no longer clothed in flesh, she was still an entity to be reckoned with. It was gratifying to have her on my side.
I continued reading:
Despite all his attempts to thwart me, I successfully completed the hobble, paving the way for the next stage of my plan, which began with my voyage to the County and the purchase of a farm.
And so I became the wife of a farmer and bore him six sons, and then, finally, a seventh whom we named Thomas Jason Ward; his first name chosen by his father, the second by me after a hero from my homeland of whom I was once fond.
We lamias are accustomed to shape-shifting, but the changes that time works on us can never be predicted. As the years passed I grew to accept my lot and to love my husband. I moved gradually closer and closer to the light, and eventually became a healer and a midwife, helping my neighbours whenever I could. Thus it was that a human, John Ward, the man who saved me, moved me down a path I had not foreseen.
I could not see how this provided information that might help Thomas Ward to destroy the Fiend, but combined with the other snippets of writing to be found in the trunk, it might tell us something. It was vital that the Spook’s apprentice should come and make his own thorough search of the trunk. I resolved to contact Alice again when I got the chance and tell her to bring him to visit the tower once more.