I was secretly pleased by Grimalkin’s praise, but there were more important things on my mind. “Where did the creature come from?” I asked her.

“I grew it,” she said simply. On seeing the shock in our faces, she explained, “From a sample in one of the jars I found in the mage’s lair. We are lucky that he did not manage to do the same. Imagine what damage such creatures could do to the County.”

At that moment I felt more uneasy than ever, and sweat formed on my brow. This was indeed a terrifying new threat. Then I suddenly sensed something else—another dark entity was out there still. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could do so, there was an angry roar from somewhere far to the southeast of us.

I saw the look on Grimalkin’s face, and it confirmed what my gift had told me.

Another vartek was on the loose!

19

The Pursuit

“IT’S heading southeast!” I cried. “Did you know there were two?” I asked, turning to Grimalkin.

“No,” she admitted, her face grim. “They are burrowers, and while they were born on the surface, they immediately disappeared underground. Later, only one reemerged. The young eat each other—only the strongest should have survived. I truly thought this meant that there was only one remaining.”

Then, without another word, the witch assassin turned and sprinted through the trees in pursuit of the vartek.

Jenny and I followed her, trying to keep up. It was dark in the wood, and there was a real danger of blundering into a tree, tripping over a log, or stumbling into a hole and breaking a leg. Somehow we reached the edge unscathed, and then had the light of the moon to guide our progress.

My gift was working well—it meant that I could sense the creature directly ahead. It was moving fast.

We crossed a meadow before coming to a high, thick hawthorn hedge. This forced us into a detour; we had to clamber over a locked five-barred gate before continuing. A sequence of small fields further impeded our pursuit.

In the distance, farther to the east, I could see lights from a farmhouse. At some point the creature’s route would take it past human habitation. We had to stop it before that happened.

We had reached an area of flat moss land with no obvious obstacles and were making better progress. Then, from somewhere ahead, the creature gave another roar.

To my dismay, it sounded even more distant. The vartek was much faster than we were—but why was there no sign of its passage, no trail of destruction?

Moments later, I discovered why. It had been moving underground. Directly ahead lay a large pile of freshly excavated earth; at its center, a dark hole gaped where the creature had emerged. We could see tracks leading away into the distance. This was where we’d heard its first roar. There was a smell of loam and dank earth, then something else—the acrid stench that I had smelled on the one that Grimalkin had lured into her pit. I remembered how she had warned me that it could spit globules of acid.