The Spook's Battle

The Spook's Battle

First edition cover
Author	Joseph Delaney
Country	Great Britain
Language	English
Series	The Wardstone Chronicles- UK The Last Apprentice - United States
Genre	Children's Fiction
Published	9 July 2007 The Bodley Head, an imprint of Random House Children's Books
Pages	496
ISBN
OCLC	123113636
Preceded by	The Spook's Secret
Followed by	The Spook's Mistake

The Spook's Battle, written by Joseph Delaney, is the fourth story in The Wardstone Chronicles series. It was released in America in March 2008, and is titled Attack of the Fiend, as the fourth book in The Last Apprentice series.

Tom’s mother has returned to her own land, Greece, to try to silence the evil rising there. In a special room in the family farmhouse, she has left behind three trunks only to be opened by her youngest son Tom. The Spook sends Tom and Alice to retrieve the trunks, but they arrive to find the farm ransacked, the trunks gone and Tom’s brother Jack, his pregnant wife Ellie, and their young daughter Mary all missing. Alice can smell that witches have been there and left in the direction of Pendle.

While Alice goes ahead to Pendle to see if she can learn anything about the missing family, Tom leaves word for his next-oldest brother, James, then goes back to Chipenden where the Spook has just been visited by a Pendle priest, Father Stocks. He has brought news that the Pendle covens are rising and the three most powerful witch clans (the Malkins, the Deanes and the Mouldheels) are rumored to be uniting in order to conjure an unimaginable evil. Together, they will be capable of raising the dark made flesh - the Fiend (Devil) himself.

The Spook and Tom head for Pendle and see a mark carved into a tree as they grow near: it is a pair of scissors, and is the mark of Grimalkin, the deadly witch assassin of the Malkin clan. In Pendle, they stay with Father Stocks in the town of Downham. While Tom is there alone, a young blonde girl named Mab comes to him and tells him that Alice has been put under a spell of binding by the Mouldheels, and she needs his help. Mab leads Tom to a clearing where her two twin sisters, Beth and Jennet, are waiting. Tom sits on a tree stump and finds himself unable to rise from it. The three young witches make him play a game of Truth or Dare, but when Mab kisses Tom, he is freed from her spell because Alice had once placed her mark on his arm. Angry, Mab tells him that her name is Mab Mouldheel, she is the leader of the Mouldheel clan and that Tom will be hers one day. The sisters storm off, and Tom follows them.

From a distance, Tom sees a gathering of many witches and Alice in the midst of them with her feet bound. When Alice is locked inside a cottage, Tom sneaks in to rescue her. He finds her in a room with mirrors on every wall: three of the mirrors show witches and one shows a small bald creature with sharp teeth and a hairy back and limbs, and all are watching Tom and Alice. Alice tells Tom that she is bound to the place by a spell cast by Mab; in order to be freed, Tom has to burn a lock of Alice’s hair that Mab has taken.

Tom physically drags her away anyway, and they are pursued by the witches into Witch Dell, a place where dead witches can continue on hunting. One of the dead witches is a relative of Alice’s, Maggie Malkin, and she helps them escape. Alice tells Tom that his family is locked up in Malkin Tower, a nearly-impenetrable fortress.