The Spook shook his head. ‘No, that’s not so – even though it’s what most people believe. The soul survives and moves on. What the buggane sucks out is the animus, or life force, which is quite a different thing. It feeds on the energy that gives a body and mind strength; it consumes its vitality so that it dies. It’s just that the mind dies first, and that’s why the person seems to be just an empty vessel.
‘There are mages known as shamans who practise the same sort of magic, which we call animism. A buggane may gain strength from an alliance with a shaman: in return for human sacrifices it will destroy an enemy or share its store of animas with the mage.
‘And that’s what I fear most – that we may not just be dealing with a buggane alone. There may be a dark shaman involved. Let’s face it, in supposedly dealing with the dark – testing and killing falsely accused witches – the dark itself is being used: not only the buggane, but also an abhuman. So tell me, Simon, when did all this start?’
‘Well over twenty-five years ago, before I was born, a witch landed on our western shore in company with that abhuman. Turned out it was her son. She was fed to the buggane and he was imprisoned and used to hunt down other witches. Potential witches have always been tested using spiked barrels, but the guilty were formerly burned at the stake. They’ve always picked on foreigners – immigrants who’ve come ashore and tried to make this their home. Adriana is one of the first to be accused from among our own people…’
At that point Simon’s voice failed him and he choked back a sob. The Spook waited patiently for him to regain his composure before questioning him further.
‘I know this is hard, Simon, but anything you can tell me will give us a chance of dealing successfully with what we face. You say “they”, but who’s behind it all? Who’s in charge of what goes on?’
‘The head of the Ruling Council is Lord Barrule of Greeba Keep, the one who condemned Adriana. It was his decision to let the abhuman live and use him to search for witches. He also said that nothing could be done about the buggane; however, feeding it witches, rather than burning them, would keep it quiet, and our own folk safer.’
‘Then he could well be the dark shaman,’ said the Spook. ‘It couldn’t be worse – he’s a man of power and influence. But if we can destroy the buggane, that’ll undermine him. What sort of a man is he?’
‘“Cruel” is the word that best sums him up,’ Simon replied. ‘He’s a man who likes to get his own way – and he’s a big gambler. There are all sorts of tales about gambling parties in the keep. They often bet on fights between dogs. They say Barrule once had a bear shipped in and made it fight a pack of wolves.’
We all fell silent on hearing that. I hate cruelty to animals, and I was thinking of Claw and her pups being in that situation.
‘It must be terrible when the buggane approaches in its spirit form,’ I said at last.
‘In the open, your only hope is to get away from it just as fast as you can,’ the Spook told me. ‘Trapped close to one, you have no chance at all, lad. It whispers to its victims in a sinister human voice until they see images in their heads – pictures of the very worst things they’ve experienced or done during their lives. The daemon is sadistic – it loves to inflict pain – and it forces them to re-live those events over and over again.
‘You hear the whispering right inside your head. Some folks have been driven mad, forcing sharp sticks into their ears to make themselves deaf, but that doesn’t help – the whispering still goes on. Over the course of a few days the creature sucks out the whole of your life force. It stores the animas of its victims in an underground labyrinth.’
‘You mean a labyrinth like the one behind the silver gate under Priestown Cathedral?’
‘No, lad, this is very different. The Bane was bound there, and that labyrinth had been dug out by the Little People and lined with cobbles. A buggane digs its own labyrinth, which weaves in and out between the roots of trees. It controls the trees and makes their roots move – sometimes with devastating effects for those who are close by. The first time I attempted to deal with the Bane, as a young man, I tied a ball of twine to the silver gate. I unravelled it as I explored the tunnels and followed it back again. But you couldn’t do this here: those buggane tunnels shift and change, sometimes overnight. They can also collapse, suffocating any who venture inside. There’s one record of a buggane being slain by a spook far to the south of the County. About three months after the daemon died, its tunnels collapsed, causing subsidence over the whole area.
‘A buggane should never be confronted in its tunnel system,’ continued the Spook, ‘so going underground is the very last thing we should be thinking about! It won’t show its face in the daytime, but just venturing near the chapel after dark should be enough to tempt it out into the open. So that’s what I intend to do…’ I slept well that night before being woken a couple of hours before dawn to take my turn on watch. I thought the dogs would be sufficient to keep guard, but the Spook was taking no chances. He said that shamans had a special power over animals and, no matter how well trained they were, could force them to do his bidding.
At last the sun came up through the trees to the east and soon the birds were singing, the wood slowly coming to life around us.
There was no sense of danger at all. It was hard to believe that, just a mile or so to the north, we would enter the domain of the buggane. We had a late breakfast – some mushrooms, again supplied by Alice. It was too risky to buy food in a tavern; neither the Spook nor I ate much anyway. We were about to begin a fast, our preparation for facing the dark.
Later, the four of us set off for the chapel. Captain Baines was to stay behind with the dogs.
‘Stealth is the key to success here,’ my master told him, ‘and I don’t want those animals anywhere near the ruin in case a shaman is involved. However, I’m reasonably confident that the buggane poses no threat during the hours of daylight. We’re just going to observe for now, so that we’re better prepared once night falls.’
By the time we arrived, rain clouds were billowing in from the west and the chapel looked forbidding in the grey light. It stood on a hillside, surrounded on three sides by a wood that extended down the slope. All the walls were standing, but there was no roof. The door had been removed from its hinges so we went inside and stared up at the ancient stone walls, which were patterned with moss and lichens.
‘Some believe that a buggane haunts a ruined chapel to prevent it being rebuilt,’ said the Spook, ‘although there’s no evidence for that. However, many creatures of the dark shun places where people gather to pray. Some boggarts move the foundations of churches as they’re being built – they can’t bear the sound of prayers. But what concerns me here is the extent of its territory. How far does it roam?’
‘There’s the keep!’ I said to Alice, pointing towards the grey tower just visible above a distant wood. Behind it loomed the forbidding Greeba Mountain.
She stared at it but said nothing.
‘That it is,’ Simon said mournfully. ‘The dungeons where they keep the victims for the buggane are on this side, just to the south of the moat…’
‘If the buggane’s territory extends that far in every direction, it’s got itself a sizeable domain,’ observed the Spook. ‘Let’s take a walk in that direction so we better know the lie of the land.’
He led the way south from the chapel ruins. We began to descend the hill, going deeper into the woods, the murmur of running water increasing in volume with every step we took. The ground was saturated and our boots made squelching sounds as we walked.
‘That should be the Greeba River down there in the valley,’ the Spook said, coming to a halt. ‘We’ve gone far enough. This is dangerous terrain – not a place we’ll risk entering after dark. If the buggane does take a different form, it’s likely to be one suited to this boggy environment.’