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

the dream seemed less substantial; soon I felt it was merely wishful thinking. What was I doing fooling myself and wasting time? I sat up and cursed for sleeping right through the night. The witches would be even farther ahead now. Wasting no time, I ate half the remaining cheese and set off west again. This time I didn’t run; I would save that for later. My legs felt stiff, and I contented myself with a fast stride to loosen them up.
    I thought about Lukrasta again. He had abducted Alice—Grimalkin had been unable to do anything to stop him. What had happened when he attempted the ritual with the Doomdryte ? And more importantly, what might Alice be suffering now? I felt helpless. He could be anywhere, and even if I could find him, what could I hope to do against such a mage?
    By late morning I was getting worried. I hadn’t found the witches’ tracks again; I was now crossing meadows and rough pasture rather than following lanes and tracks. This meant they could already have turned and headed for the coast. I estimated that I was presently about four miles from the sea, heading south, somewhere between Formby and Liverpool.
    I came to a halt, filled with uncertainty. Then, very suddenly, there was a flash of light behind my eyes and a pressure on my forehead—and I knew precisely where they had gone. It was something very similar to the feeling I’d had back in my bedroom in Chipenden, the conviction that something was terribly wrong. Now I felt that certainty again. I knew where the witches were, the direction they had taken with the Fiend’s head. This was surely the gift that Mam was talking about in the dream—the gift that a hunter needs: the ability to track a prey without signs, to pinpoint its location.
    They hadn’t gone west to the sea. They were continuing south and were passing east of Liverpool. Where could they be bound? In my mind’s eye I tried to conjure up the maps I’d studied in the Spook’s library, all of which had perished in the fire. Beyond Liverpool lay the County border, and beyond that, county after county—more than two hundred miles to the south coast.
    That made no sense at all. They needed a port on the west coast to take a boat over the Irish Sea.
    I began to run again. Wherever they were heading, I would eventually find out, because I could sense their location in my head. For a while they seemed to have changed direction and were heading east, but after a few hours they veered back toward the coast and continued south again.
    I came to a wide river, which I guessed was the Mersey. As I forded it, I wondered how the witches had managed to cross over. One possibility was that they had witch dams in place; in Pendle, these were used to temporarily hold back running water. They would have had to make a detour east, to where the river was narrower. That explained their earlier change of direction. The delay meant that I was closing in on them once more.
    After a while, in the far distance, I saw a walled city with a castle and the tower of a cathedral. We were beyond the County border now, and again drawing on my memories of the Spook’s maps, I guessed that the city was Chester— though I’d never traveled this far south over land. If that were the case, it also had a river called the Dee.
    Sure enough, I sensed my enemies heading east again, no doubt to use another witch dam. I simply forded the river, which meant that I was drawing near to my prey. Beyond the city, the witches turned directly west.
    Soon I saw mountains ahead and glimpsed the sea in the distance to the north. We seemed to be following a coastal plain, a wide strip of flat land between the mountains and the water. And now I was on a track that eventually gave way to a wide road. It was muddy, so I slowed down and walked on the grass verge. The occasional cart trundled past, its wheels adding to the deep ruts, but nobody gave me a second glance.
    Eventually I came