Eventually, moving through a strait that Mam called the Pillars of Herakles, we entered the Mediterranean, a vast inland sea.
'Who was Herakles?' I asked Mam. 'Was he a Greek?'
'That he was, son – a hero and man of great strength,' she answered. 'The strongest man in the whole world. See that huge rock to the north? It's called Gibraltar, and it's one of the two pillars. Herakles picked it up and threw it there!'
I laughed. It was preposterous! How big would he have to be to do that?
'You can laugh, son,' Mam chided, 'but Greece is a land of many strange stories – more are true than you might believe.'
'But not throwing the rock!'
Mam didn't reply; she simply smiled mysteriously and turned away. But before she'd taken half a dozen paces she beckoned me, so I followed her down to her cabin. She hadn't invited me in before so I wondered what she wanted. It had to be something she needed to say to me in private.
Mam led the way into the gloom of her cabin, lit a lantern and placed it in the middle of the table, motioning for me to sit down opposite her.
'Now, I think this is the time to tell you a little more of what we face in Greece,' Mam said.
'Thank you,' I replied. 'It's been troubling me that I don't know much about it.'
'I know, son, but I'm afraid there's lots that I don't know either. I'm worried that the Ordeen might pass through the portal before we arrive. As I said, she visits every seven years, but not on exactly the same day.'
'So we have no way of knowing for certain when she'll come?'
'No, but close to the time there'll be unmistakable signs. First birds and animals will flee the area. Then the sky will turn yellow and whirlwinds will sweep away from the point where the portal opens. It has always been so. Three days and three hours later, we will all be dead or the Ordeen will have been destroyed.'
'Do we really have a chance of success, Mam?' I demanded. It was terrifying. So much depended on what we were preparing to do.
'Yes, son, we do. But it'll be a close-run thing. When the Ordeen appears on the plain south of Kalambaka, her intention will be to ravage that town, slay its inhabitants and take their blood. Those who escape her servants will be slain and devoured by the maenads. None will escape.'
'What about the folk from the town, Mam? Why do they live there if this happens every seven years?'
'Their homes are there, son, and they're poor. All over the world there are people who live close to active volcanoes or in areas afflicted by earthquakes or floods. They have no choice. In Kalambaka at least they know approximately when the danger will come so they can flee the area. The roads will be thronged with refugees. Of course, some leave it too late to escape; others, the old and the sick, simply cannot travel. And this time, because the power of the Ordeen has increased so much, thanks to the Fiend, even the monasteries will not be safe. The attack comes from both land and air. Flying lamia witches, the vaengir, will find the heights of Meteora no obstacle at all. The Fiend has been sending increasing numbers of them to the Ordeen's side, but at least my sisters won't be amongst them. He is their enemy too.'
'And what happens when the portal opens?' I asked, filled with curiosity. 'Have you seen it happen?'
'Once, son. Just once, many years ago, before I met your dad. But I'll never forget it. First a pillar of fire will extend from the ground to the dark storm-cloud above. This usually fades to reveal the Ord within. Then torrential rain will fall, cooling the stones of the citadel. It is then that we must go in. All entities passing through a portal from the dark need a little time to adjust and gather their strength,' Mam explained. 'That was true of the Fiend last summer, remember. It gave you time to flee from Pendle to the protection of my special room in the farmhouse. So we must take advantage of the same time-lag here. Before the Ordeen and her followers have their full powers, we must break into the Ord and destroy both her and them. It's our only hope.'
As our journey progressed, the crew's indifference to their unusual passengers turned to open hostility. The captain explained that they had begun to fear and mistrust the Pendle witches. One of the sailors had gone missing on night watch. It had been in the midst of a storm and he'd probably been swept overboard, but they suspected that the witches had taken the poor man's life to satisfy their need for blood. So the voyage grew increasingly uncomfortable and we were all longing for it to be over.
True to his word, the Spook had discontinued my lessons and hardly spoke to me. Alice, he could not bear to look at. Once, when we were talking on deck, he raised his eyes, tutted and went back down to the hold.
So Arkwright took it upon himself to continue my training, concentrating on physical skills as he had back at the mill. But it was a whole new experience to fight with staffs on a deck that pitched and rolled with the swell.
As we got closer to Greece and the temperature increased, the Spook began to sleep up on deck, away from the oppressive heat of the hold. And finally he began to speak to me again. It started with a nod and a half-smile, but before long he was giving me lessons once more so I now had the benefit of two spooks training me.
'Get out your notebook, lad,' he said to me as, under a cloudless evening sky and with a light following wind, we sailed across the Straits of Otranto, approaching the Greek mainland at last.
'Well, I mentioned fire elementals to you back in the County and said I'd tell you about them one day,' he went on. 'We don't have them back home, probably because the weather is so wet. Even in summer we rarely go more than a week without a heavy downpour! But Greece is hot and dry then, and in those conditions fire elementals can thrive. As I say, they are very dangerous and sometimes take the form of glowing orbs, some translucent, others opaque. Take careful note of what I'm saying because we're certain to meet them in Greece: they'll come through the portal with the Ordeen.'
I dipped my nib into the pot of ink and began to write as fast as I could. This knowledge was soon going to be very important.
'As a general rule, the opaque ones are hotter and more dangerous,' continued the Spook. 'Indoors, they often float close to the ceiling but they can also move very fast and are almost impossible to dodge. Contact with them can result in severe burns – and often in a painful death. In more extreme cases such elementals can reduce their victims to ashes almost instantly.