Terce liked it not; Mallice liked it not; the sideem and the guardmoles of Lucerne’s entourage liked it not.
But the Master of the Word revelled in it. There was something right to him about the devastation they discovered at Beechenhill. Visually he thought it was … magnificent. And if that is the way a mole chooses to see a scene of death and dying about the Stone of a system which had resisted the power of the Word for so long then so it must be.
A scene lit that day by a red rising sun, an effect that began to fade as the morning wore on and the Master inspected the place. But the image lingered on, and seemed even to redden his eyes as he gazed about, content to see that, though his orders had not been obeyed, yet Beechenhill seemed to have been destroyed.
What was more, and what became plain as he and Terce listened to the guardmoles’ reports, the eldrene Wort had had a paw in it. She had manipulated the whole thing. She had achieved it.
A pity, really, she was mad, but so she seemed to be for the Stone Mole was all she talked about. If Drule was here there would have been ways …
‘Take her to Ashbourne and let us hope her ravings of the Stone Mole stop,’ said Lucerne. ‘Have her close-guarded, and honour her. She may be unorthodox, but she got results. Even so, I think her time is done.’
Lucerne smiled round at Terce, but Terce looked bleak. He liked it not, Lucerne knew that. Well, let them hear the reports through first and then they could discuss the implications of it all. Meanwhile he decided that they should inspect the dead more thoroughly.
‘Master mine, I would prefer not.’
‘Mallice, you will come.’
His voice was sharp and thin with her, and he had deputed two trusted guardmoles to be at her flanks all the time. For her safety, he said.
‘I wish not to see corpses, Lucerne. I am with pup.’
‘Bring her,’ he said savagely. Even before they saw anything the sick sweet smell of death made her retch and she protested yet again: ‘I am near my time and this …’
‘This will hurry it along, my dear,’ he said.
‘This is Squeezebelly, Master.’
Lucerne turned from Mallice and looked down curiously at the slumped corpse. Death is a tedious thing.
‘Master, this is Merrick of Hawe, sideem of Ashbourne.’
Lucerne stared. Mallice retched and was sick.
‘And these?’ said Lucerne, pointing at the corpses on the wires.
‘Moles of the Word and of the Stone. The fighting was at night. Some did not see the wire they ran into, others used their greater strength to force weaker ones on to it.’
‘So moles of the Stone snouted our guardmoles?’
‘It seems so, Master.’
‘For a peace-loving system this was strange behaviour, was it not?’ said Lucerne cheerfully. ‘Let it be known what Beechenhill moles did. Eh, Mallice, eh?’ He grinned unpleasantly at her.
‘Master mine …’ she said weakly.
‘The sideem Mallice is ill, take her from here. Let me know when her time comes.’ His voice was chill – and full of mock concern.
‘You are cruel,’ hissed Mallice at him.
‘And you and yours,’ he said with menace.
For the first time Mallice showed him the fear that he had been building in her all along their journey from Cannock.
He smiled, charm itself.
‘Go slowly now,’ he said more gently. ‘Before, you always liked me to be harsh.’
He watched her go, and Terce watched him watch her go and saw the contempt he felt.
He knows, thought Terce. And Terce’s eyes went round the slopes of Beechenhill and he scented the odorous air with distaste. No, no, no, no, he liked it not at all. Something was wrong, very wrong indeed. Something incomplete.
‘Master, forgive me, but I too feel a little faint. May I leave thee and go among those moles further down the slopes?’
‘Do it, Twelfth Keeper, and when you have talked to them, you come back and tell me what it is that troubles you.’
They smiled coldly at each other, and each was thinking that the other’s time of usefulness was done. Beechenhill was taken, the Word triumphant, and now …
The Master must die, thought Terce.
Terce must be made eliminate, thought Lucerne. Drule, I would have had thee with me now; leaving you behind was a mistake.
‘Have Wort sent to me before she goes to Ashbourne,’ Terce told a guardmole a little later on.
He managed a smile when she came, and stanced her down.
‘You have done well,’ he said.
‘The Stone has done it all,’ Wort said immediately.
‘Ah, yes. And the Stone Mole?’
‘Lucerne won’t find his holy body,’ said Wort matter-of-factly.
‘Why don’t you tell me what really happened here?’ said Terce. ‘From the beginning, and taking your time.’
So Wort did, right from the beginning, the strangest, maddest tale that Terce ever heard, except for one thing. All the evidence supported the truth of it. Moles called in for corroboration after Wort had been taken away described it just the same. And all spoke in awe of the Stone Mole, describing his suffering as if it had been their own. And the strangeness of his parting, or disappearance, or whatever that was … ! No corpse, no sudden recovery. Nothing, but images out of the confusion of fighting and a tired dawn of a young mole, an old mole, a White Mole.
No, Terce liked it even less. It stank of martyrdom and mystery. It stenched of just the kind of nonsense that whatever followers were left could rally round. It was rank with danger to the Word.
Yet here and soon, in this confusion, in this possible disaster, the Word would guide him. Terce trusted that. Always, always, it had been a risk, but somewhere here in all of it was a way of ending Lucerne’s mortal life and beginning the immortalisation of Rune’s dynasty.
That would be. For now, his concern was Mallice and her coming pups, of whom he would glory to be grandfather. His task might have been harder if Drule had been here, but he was not. The guardmoles who close-guarded her were moles he knew; they owed him favours. Let her have the pups here, and soon. She would be safe.
Meanwhile he must listen and learn, and the Word would, as the eldrene Wort might once have said, show him the way.
The Word did, and very soon.
‘The Master asks for your presence with him,’ a messenger said. ‘He is up near the Stone.’
He went and found Lucerne looking smug, and a tired and travelled guardmole stanced nearby.
‘Ah, Terce, the day’s good news is not over yet, for there is more. Harebell, sister of Wharfe, sister of another mole you know, is caught. More than caught indeed; she is with pup.’
‘It is the season for pups,’ said Terce easily.
‘And mothers too.’
‘Mothers, Master?’
‘Old mothers. Mothers with dry teats. Mothers do grow old, Terce, very. Or had you forgotten?’
Terce was silent, thinking, frowning. Then he let out a little sigh of disbelief.
‘The Mistress Henbane, Master?’
‘This mole’s commander has her with Harebell. And others, too, of rather less interest to the Word.’
‘Then we must see them!’ said Terce, almost jubilant. Henbane! The Word had spoken.
‘It is a little way, I fear, for they are half a day from here. They were found hiding and caught napping, literally it seems. And just as well by his account or floods would have drowned them dead, and thus denied us the pleasures yet to come. Think of it, Terce: united once more with Henbane on the very day of our greatest triumph.’
‘There are matters we must …’
‘They can wait,’ said Lucerne sharply.
He turned to the guardmole and dismissed him with more smiles and compliments, but the moment he had gone the smiles faded.
‘I know you, Terce. These matters … they will be to do with something that troubles you, and no doubt you are right to raise them and I am derelict to avoid them. Well, Terce, I like not my mother; I like not the idea of my sister, though her pups may be a very different thing. Yes, they may well be. These are matters I wish to attend to. What is yours that it is more important?’
‘The Stone Mole, Master. The Stone Mole is dead, long live the Stone Mole. I tell, you Master, the Word is in danger now.’
Then he told Lucerne his fears, powerfully and convincingly, and sought to persuade him to have Henbane brought here.
‘Harebell is too far gone with pup, according to that guardmole. She is imminent and my dear mother naturally wishes to stay with my dear sister, and since for now I wish nothing more than to see them, why, the Master will be the one to move.’
‘As you will, Master.’
‘Yes, as I will.’
Terce was expressionless and, despite all he said, inwardly pleased. The Word had sent Henbane as guidance to Terce. She was the way. The one mole in moledom who might yet conquer Lucerne.
‘Is she well?’ asked Terce. ‘The Mistress Henbane, I mean.’
‘Elderly and fit, just as you always said Rune used to be. Just as one day I shall be.’
‘I hope so, Master, though I shall not live to see it.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Lucerne, and laughed. Somewhere here in Beechenhill, somehow for reasons neither fully understood, the relationship of the Twelfth Keeper and the Master of the Word had turned a corner into hatred.
‘Oh, and Terce,’ said the Master, so gently. ‘Summon Mallice. She shall come with us.’
‘But Master, she is near …’
‘Near her time? Ah, yes. But then she always wanted to meet Henbane, and – who knows? – my mother may not live too long.’
‘Yes, Master,’ hissed Terce.
‘We shall simply have to wait,’ said Sleekit firmly, frowning.
Holm frowned back, jerked his head about a bit, looked around the running muddy tunnel they were in and sighed.
‘Wait,’ he echoed faintly.
‘Yes, wait. I thought you liked this kind of place. You like being grubby.’
‘With Lorren, not you. You’re Sleekit, not my mate. Not nice with you. Nice with her.’ Holm was indeed grubby, the grit and wet sand on the walls and floor of the limestone tunnel he had finally brought them up was thick in his fur and between his talons.
Sleekit, on the other paw, contrived to look surprisingly clean, but then at the first opportunity she was inclined to wash herself in any running water she could find, and if that was not available then drips of water were nearly as good. And failing even that, then if there was a current of air she would dry herself and shake her fur clean.
‘Gets dirty again,’ Holm would say.
‘Lorren would love you more if you were clean,’ Sleekit would respond.
But it was only friendly banter between two moles who were now living on the very edge of disaster, and needed all the lightness they could find.
Holm had led them on a fur-raising journey back through the Castern Chambers, which had involved wading, swimming, and diving through sumps and emerging in lightless pockets of air, until, miraculously as it had seemed to Sleekit, he had got them to the torrent beyond which Harebell and the others had been captured.
The water level was much lower than when they were last there, though dangerous still, and Holm had explained and then demonstrated how Sleekit must swim across, and somehow they had made it.
After that it had been a relatively simple matter of following clues and probabilities until they had found a place along the Manifold Valley where a small grike garrison was stationed. They had lain in wait and watched, and Sleekit had recognised two guardmoles she had seen during the flood in Castern.
‘I hope they will not recognise me,’ said Sleekit.
After that Holm had lain low, while Sleekit used her former sideem ways and risked direct contact with the grikes, claiming she was journeying northwards on the Master’s business. She felt safe enough, for the spot was isolated and unlikely to have another sideem there who might have identified her as false.
She was with them a few hours, and the fact that she was female and the grikes all male was helpful, for they soon revealed they had taken five female prisoners from the rabble who had escaped from Beechenhill and they were not certain what to do with them.
‘Pupping, aren’t they?’
‘All of them?’ asked Sleekit.
‘All but one.’
They said this oddly and she soon found out why. They knew, and this explained their caution and their doubt, that the odd one out was Henbane, former Mistress of the Word. Or that was who she said she was.
‘The sideem would not by any chance know what Mistress Henbane looks like?’
‘I saw her once,’ said Sleekit, realising that this was at least a way to contact the captive moles. She prayed they would not reveal that they recognised her.
‘What will you do with this mole if she is the Mistress?’ asked ‘sideem’ Sleekit as they went into the tunnels to see the prisoners.
‘Keep her and tell sideem Merrick double quick. The others are a useful source of pups and could be used for breeding. Not many fertile females about these days …’ The grikes grinned and laughed and nudged each other at the prospect. But they went serious again: sideem never laughed at such things.
Sleekit was taken to the captive moles and was able to establish where they were hidden so that Holm might find a route through limestone tunnels to it. A slim chance, but just possible.
She was careful to talk loudly just before she reached them, making clear by what she said that she was here as a sideem and, therefore, not to be recognised. She found them all being kept together in a cramped burrow, and well guarded too. Along with Harebell and Henbane was Quince and two pregnant females she did not know.
At the sight of Sleekit, Henbane, more used to hiding her feelings, stayed expressionless and, as best they could, the others took their cue from that. But even so it was all Harebell could do not to express her joy at seeing Sleekit so unexpectedly.
‘Well, sideem,’ said the senior guardmole, ‘you tell me which you think is Mistress Henbane, if, that is, any of them is.’ It was a tense moment, for whatever she said would sentence Henbane to punishment and death.
Sleekit thought quickly and decided what to do. She lowered her snout towards Henbane, and said, ‘Mistress, I am grieved to see thee thus.’
‘So she is who she says she is?’
‘She is.’
‘Yet you greet her deferentially.’
‘A long word for a guardmole,’ said Sleekit haughtily. ‘I hope you know its meaning, and remember that Mistress Henbane did much for moledom before her apostasy, so treat her well.’
This was the best Sleekit could do for Henbane. As she looked at them she guessed that the moles had realised when they were caught that the grikes were only keeping those who were with pup alive and Henbane had decided to give her real name rather than be drowned with the others in the stream.
Quince stared at her and Sleekit realised that she must have claimed she was with pup to survive as well …
‘These others, sideem, I don’t suppose you know their names!’
It was said more as a joke than anything for before she had even framed a reply the grike guardmole said. ‘Don’t worry. That’s Harebell there, and that’s Quince, and …’ And he gave all their names correctly and with an unpleasant proprietorial leer, as if the pups they carried were his own.
‘They seem near their time.’
A look of minor alarm came over the grike’s face.
‘Well, I’ve already sent a couple of moles down to Ashbourne – one via the valley, one over the hill by way of Beechenhill – to tell them who we’ve caught. They should be pleased. But we don’t want pups here. It’s a garrison, not a bloody birth burrow.’
‘You’d better find them more suitable quarters then, hadn’t you?’ said Sleekit, seeing an opportunity for getting them out of here to somewhere from where it might be easier to help them escape.
‘Well … maybe,’ said the grike.
‘Do you know what happened to the Beechenhill moles?’ said Sleekit, trying to mask any hint she may have given that she had the captives’ interest in mind.
‘Drowned, we thought. Drowned in Castern.’
Sleekit shook her head, and though she hated to give her friends information in such a way she felt it was for the best.
‘No, killed. I heard they escaped from the chambers and most died by guardmole talons down by the Beechenhill Stone. I doubt if any got away at all.’
‘Blest be the Word!’ said the grike.
‘Aye, blessed be the Word!’ agreed Sleekit.
Sleekit emerged from the garrison and went on her way northward, being very cautious about deviating back lest the grikes were watching. It was therefore some time before she found Holm again, and they were able to seek out an alternative way into the garrison tunnels. Though they were not able to get to the chamber where Harebell, Henbane and the others were being kept they did at least succeed in reaching a point where, with a squeeze and a slide, they could see down into the main tunnel into the garrison, and overhear some of what the grikes’ guardmoles said when they were at rest.
‘We must wait patiently, and an opportunity for doing something will come along,’ said Sleekit. ‘The Master Lucerne will send moles here to get Henbane and the others, or perhaps even come himself for Henbane must matter to him. And if he realises who Harebell really is she will matter too and, I fear, need all the help we can give if she is to be saved. But at least Henbane and Harebell now know that I am here nearby and that may give them courage to try to escape.’
Holm sighed again.
‘I like route-finding, not waiting,’ he said. ‘Waiting drags.’
‘Then use the time to clean yourself, but do it quietly. And while you’re doing it consider ways of getting moles out of here under pressure, for we may need to.’
Holm sighed some more, dejectedly looked at his fur, and wondered where to start.
Lucerne, Terce, a few guardmoles and a very pregnant Mallice reached the garrison as dusk fell, and while Mallice was close-guarded in a quite separate tunnel and burrows – against her will but ‘for her own protection’ – Lucerne and Terce went immediately to see Henbane and Harebell.
‘See’ was the word, for just as he had with Wharfe, Lucerne preferred to spy on them from a distance first and then retreat, delaying direct contact until it best suited him. He stared at them unseen for an hour or more before he left.
‘I shall speak with them later,’ he said, and Terce saw that he looked excited and cruelly pleased, ‘but now I will visit Mallice.’
‘Master, I should like to come too, ’ said Terce carefully. So far he had made no comment about Lucerne’s rough treatment of Mallice, feeling, perhaps rightly, that his loyalty was being tested.
‘No, but be ready this night.’
Lucerne found Mallice out of sorts, irritable, and tired. She was in a high, rough, damp chamber, and it was cold. What little nesting material there was was mouldy and lank.
‘Master mine,’ she whispered, ‘send Terce to me, I am near my time. I cannot have my pups in here. Send him to help me.’
‘He is engaged,’ lied Lucerne, ‘and I have need of thee alone.’
‘But I am near my time, my dear.’
‘I said I have need of thee, and I will have thee.’ His eyes were full of hate.
‘But … no!’
‘I have seen my mother and my sister this night.’
‘And, my love?’ said Mallice, hoping for a diversion.
‘I hated to see them close. I hated to see them talk. I hated all of it, Mallice, and now … I have need of thee.’
His voice had become thin and strange, almost pleading. She knew him well. Seeing Henbane had not agreed with him. Seeing Henbane with Harebell had agreed with him even less.
‘Gently then, my dear,’ she said, and near her time and heavy though she was, she proffered herself to him.
Then that perverse mole took her one last time, and for a moment forgot his mother, and for a moment more forgot his sister, and for a brief moment forgot even himself.
‘Master mine,’ she tried to sigh as if she had enjoyed herself.
‘Now have your pups,’ he said, ‘have them well.’
‘I shall, my dear, I shall, but send Terce to me.’
‘He does not want to come. He says you disgust him now.’ Lucerne laughed, a laugh to put fear into another’s heart. ‘Your fat body disgusts him. And it disgusts me too.’
‘My … dear … please send him.’
‘It’s company you want, is it, mole? I’ll send you moles to keep you company, oh yes I shall!’ He laughed again. ‘When your pupping starts I want to know so tell the guardmole.’
‘Am I captive then, my love?’
‘Are not thy pups captive of thy body? Not for long perhaps, but certainly they are victims.’
‘Of what?’ she said sharply.
‘Of thine infidelity.’ His eyes narrowed as hers widened.
‘Infidelity to thee?’ whispered Mallice.
Lucerne only laughed and left with no word more, while she, uncertain, shrank back with a paw to her flank and wondered how long she could delay before she must say that her pupping was begun.
Lucerne instructed the guardmoles, who were moles of Terce’s choice, to admit nomole to those tunnels, nomole, on pain of death and then went and summoned the senior guardmole of the garrison, who was plainly a mole of purpose and ambition. Yet he wished once more he had Drule here. He was the mole for this.
‘Master?’
‘Senior guardmole … I need two moles obedient to the Word and to their Master.’
‘We all are here.’
‘Obedient and unquestioning.’
‘What must they do, Master?’
‘Obey me only.’
‘I am one, and I can find another. Tell me what we must do.’
‘If I asked you to kill your own mother would you do it?’
‘If the Master asked it, yes I would.’
‘And pups?’
‘My own … ?’ The grike faltered at this.
‘Not thine. A follower’s brood, and bastards.’
‘I would, and another here would too.’
‘Be ready for a summons from me this night. Speak to nomole of this, for it is business of the Word. Do it well and the Word shall be pleased.’
‘Yes, Master,’ said the grike guardmole, eyes purposeful.
Such opportunity for advancement might come but once in a lifetime and he intended to take it with all paws.
Darkness falls in the deep, incised valley of the Manifold like a close and clinging dankness that catches at a mole’s throat. Things move muffled, the hazed moon moves slow, stars seem too far away, the night crawls; screams are barely heard.
Terce did not sleep, but lay angry and thinking. The Master had ordered him not to see Mallice and then said, ‘Be ready this night!’ But for what he did not know, and so he did not sleep. Something with Mallice?
What was plain to Terce was that from the time the Master had spied on Henbane and his sister Harebell he was cold with sibling envy. And Mallice was in danger, that was plain as well.
How hard the Word tested him! How small the difference between triumph and disaster yet might be. But how sweet and divine the triumph when it came. So Terce was restless, waiting, expecting his summons.
A scream, barely heard in the distance, sometime in the night. Mallice’s? Perhaps. Terce had never felt so ready for new life as he did now. ‘I shall be the grandfather of the new Master of the Word, and his name shall be divine. I shall …’ Terce waited, ready for it all.
Henbane was awake, listening to Harebell and knowing her time was very near. Her movements were heavy now, her breathing shallow and a little desperate.
‘I am afraid,’ whispered Harebell in the dark. ‘What will they do to my pups?’
‘I was afraid, my dear, when it was my time, yet here you are. I shall see that they will live. I am here.’
‘I am glad you are …’
In the cloying darkness Henbane heard her daughter, and shed tears for her. She knew her fear.
‘Help us,’ she prayed to that great unknown to which she gave no name, neither Word nor Stone, ‘help us all. I shall be their grandmother, show me what best to do.’
‘Mother,’ whispered Harebell again, ‘I think my pupping will soon start.’
‘I am here, my love, I am close.’
In the distance, down the tunnels, muffled, they heard a scream.
‘Holm!’
Holm stanced up in the dark.
‘The scream is from where that Mallice went. She’s pupping. Something will happen now. Be ready.’
Holm’s eyes were wide open, and they stared unblinking at a murky tunnel wall.
‘Very ready,’ he said.
Yes, the screams were Mallice’s and hearing them the guardmole came.
‘Have you begun?’ he said. ‘The Master …’
‘I have, mole,’ she sighed between the pains, ‘tell him.’
Running paws in the dark, another scream. ‘Oh yes,’ whispered Lucerne, Master of the Word, all to himself. ‘Mallice has begun and soon they shall all be punished of the Word, and all Atone. Eldrene Wort, you would be proud of me!’ He was laughing aloud when the guardmole came.
‘Master …’
‘I heard. Summon the senior guardmole. He will be ready. And Terce as well. Get him.’
Quickly the guardmole came with a companion and they waited hushed and silent.
Then Terce arrived, a little slower, a good deal older. They heard Mallice scream again.
‘Mallice has begun,’ said Lucerne calmly, moving not at all.
Terce was watchful, and silent.
‘What would you say, Twelfth Keeper, if I told you that the pups she is about to pup were bastards all? Eh? What would you have me do?’ Lucerne’s voice was cold, his eyes black, his fur glossy with night.
Terce said nothing.
‘Well, Twelfth Keeper, father of this bitch, you shall hear what I shall do and we will know your loyalty then.’
‘My loyalty is to the Master and the Word,’ said Terce.
Lucerne laughed at this and, turning to the guardmoles, said, ‘Go to your prisoners. Take the moles Henbane and Harebell to the entrance of the tunnels where the sideem Mallice is held. Brook no argument with them, use force if need be. Do it now.’
Lucerne turned to Terce and loomed over him in a posture that was almost bullying, and certainly insolent.
‘Come with me,’ he said. It was an order, not a request.
‘Yes, Master,’ said Terce softly, and they went. But the eyes of Terce were not those of an abject mole, but of one who awaited his time.
The surface was chill and damp, the clouds above were lit up with the equinoctial moon, off below them down the slopes the Manifold, still full with the rain of the day before, flowed and roared in the gloom.
Shapes came out of the dark, two great guardmoles each guiding a female. The first to come was breathing heavily, and in some pain.
‘Hello, Harebell,’ said the stranger in the dark, his voice mock warm and therefore cruel.
The second guaramole brought the Mistress Henbane.
‘Hello, mother,’ said Lucerne. ‘I have found a challenge for thee greater than any you have faced before. You will not like it, but I shall – very much – and so shall the Word.’ This was Lucerne’s greeting to his mother after so long: cold, cynical, matter-of-fact.
Henbane’s eyes widened fractionally, and though when Harebell turned and looked at her in alarm she nodded a sign to keep calm, she herself felt shock. He was here sooner than she could have expected; and vile Terce as well.
With that instinct she herself had bred into him, and which Terce had trained and refined still more, she knew why he had come: he was here for the kill.
‘Now follow me, all of you,’ he said, and she knew their true ordeal was beginning. To Harebell he spoke no more.
While in the shadows near that place Holm stared at Sleekit, and Sleekit stared at the tunnel entrance, empty now of moles. She turned to Holm and said quietly, ‘Listen now, my dear, and listen well. You are a route-finder; you never were and I think the Stone never desired you to be, a fighter. I do not know what is going to happen tonight, but I think there will be much violence. It is plain that Harebell is near her time, and already Mallice has begun. Lucerne means no good in bringing them together here.
‘Yesterday, when Squeezebelly spoke to us, he asked that survivors should seek to escape while they still could. I trust that some did so. We got away, this far at least, and I think that others might have done. For myself … when I said goodbye to Mayweed at Chadlington I knew that I was beginning a task from which I might not come back. My beloved Mayweed knew it too. We have had our time, and he is always with me, as I am with him.
‘But you and Lorren, your time must not be yet. So promise me, Holm, that you will escape from here and not try to fight. Promise me, my dear.’
Holm looked at her in the dark, his eyes wider than ever, and he said, ‘Sleekit, I don’t want to travel alone. I don’t want to leave you.’
‘Promise it, my dear. I need to know to have the strength for what I think that I must do. Henbane needed me once before like this, she needs me now. I owe it … I owe it to myself, and to the memory of Tryfan, who knew her truer than anymole, and loved her as I do. But this is not your fight and not your task.’
‘Could help though,’ said Holm miserably.
Sleekit smiled.
‘Yes, you could! The others will not be so well guarded this terrible night. There might be a chance for them. Soon you can leave me, go back to the tunnel into the garrison and wait your chance, for a mole there might need guidance.’
Holm perked up.
‘But first,’ she whispered, ‘guide me into the tunnel the Master has taken Henbane down. We need a route by which we can escape. Will you do that?’
Holm nodded.
‘Stay here, don’t move, I’ll come back,’ he said. And soon he was, grubbier than ever.
‘Found one.’
Then, secret as water in the night, he led her upslope above the tunnels and then through faults and solution crevices in the limestone and so into the tunnels below.
Mallice was near pupping when Lucerne and the others reached her, and the guardmole there was much concerned.
‘Dismissed,’ said Lucerne quickly. He wanted moles loyal to him alone here now.
‘Yes, Sir!’ said the guardmole, and scrabbled to get away.
Lucerne turned to Mallice and said pitilessly, ‘You needed company, my dear, and now you have it. This is the Mistress Henbane, and this her daughter, my sister, Harebell. Near pupping too, it seems! Well, well, and what shall we all do? I’ll tell you what you’ll do, and I’ll tell you once only. But first I’ll tell you why.
‘Sweet Mallice here, whose very life I once saved – remember, mother? I’m sure you do Mallice carries bastards in her womb and now they struggle to get out.’
He held up a paw to stop Mallice’s whimpering her feeble protest as she screamed out a contraction again.
‘Harebell too will soon start pupping and I intend to leave. She, like me, is too young to remember it, but mother does. We were made separate at birth, and I was reared and groomed in Whern for the Mastership. She I know not as a sister, but as a rival she … exists. That will not do.
‘But now I need an heir. I thought Mallice would provide and so she might, if the Word allows it. The pups she carries might well be mine. Who knows? She does not, nor I. Nor the mole Weld who is at this moment cast down into the Lower Sumps of Cannock.’
He turned to Harebell as Mallice screamed again.
‘Where, you may like to know, certain other moles are kept. Poor Betony for one, mindless now. Wharfe, for another, our dear brother. Yes, yes, he is there, forgotten, dying slow.
‘Now you, Harebell …’
Harebell gasped with coming pain, and turned to Henbane in horror at what she heard, and at the coldness she saw. Henbane stared out rejection and contempt at her son. Harebell gasped again.
‘Males are not wanted here, Terce, so we shall go, but for safety’s sake these guardmoles can remain. Know only this. I want to see none of you alive again, not one. But your pups, well, that’s a different thing. One will do. Yes, one. Guardmoles, bring the last surviving pup to me. He, or she, shall be the one. The Word shall judge which one is best. If Mallice’s, why, then the Word surely intends me to know that the pups she carries were mine after all. If Harebell’s, then at least they are my kin. One will do. As for you, my mother dear, you have been dead to me for many moleyears past, and you are dead still.
‘Terce? No comment? We’ll leave it to the Word and a mother’s love to decide. One only of you all shall survive, and that a pup. Sort it out between yourselves. Now we shall go, and you guardmoles shall kill anymole that tries to escape. And when the pupping is done let these females decide among themselves which is to survive.
‘Questions?’
The guardmoles frowned and shook their heads. Talking was not necessary.
‘Come Terce, let us leave the future to forces greater than ourselves.’
With one last look at Mallice, who was now in a corner of the unpleasant chamber and breathing fast and ever faster, Terce turned and left. Lucerne smiled, the madness of evil on his face, and followed.
The guardmoles raised their talons, and forced Henbane and the weeping Harebell fully into the chamber.
‘Get on with it, you bitches,’ the senior guardmole growled.
Some of this – enough – Sleekit and Holm had heard in the shadows of the tunnel Holm had found. They had frozen where they stanced when the dismissed guardmole had gone by, and then again when Terce and Lucerne left.
‘You will wait here until I come back, and guide anymole with me out of this place. Then you must go as you promised,’ breathed Sleekit.
Holm stared at her.
‘When I go home, and if I see Mayweed, what shall I say to him from you?’ he whispered.
She smiled, tears in her eyes.
‘My dear, I think I know where my Mayweed will be and that I shall see him there before you do. But if you find him before me, you shall know what to say on my behalf! Now, I must go, and when your chance comes, as it will, take it knowing the Stone is with you. And then get yourself back to Lorren as quickly as you can!’
‘Bitches!’ muttered the guardmole again, and Sleekit prepared herself for the bloody hours soon to come.
There are times when anymole, even a Chronicler devoted to the truth, hesitates to scribe, still less to speak. He turns from the evidence in grim despair, tears in his eyes; he turns back to it and tries again but cannot; he ventures to the surface and seeks comfort in the trees and in the skies, but sees them not, for the shameful images of what he knows fills his mind and sickens his heart.
Nor is there consolation in knowing that even worse horrors than what happened at Lucerne’s command in Mallice’s birth burrow that night have happened elsewhere, and are recorded. No doubt they have. But what he knows is here and now, and that is quite enough.
Of what happened that night this Chronicler has scribed, and then been forced to scratch his talons across it all. Horror happened there. Pups were pupped to die.
Mothers defended their own to the very death. Darkness was red with blood. Mewings started and then died. Seven pups born and Henbane and Harebell forced to defend half of them. Half? Three and a half is half of seven, and this much we can say: if it had come to ripping into two the one who survived the others then had they had the chance Mallice and Harebell would have done it. Aye, mole, it would have come to that and was beginning to when the guardmoles intervened. Their task was to see that one pup alone survived and nomole else. They turned on Harebell and then on Mallice, both already weak from pupping and from wounds the other had inflicted. It was in that moment of murder Henbane took up the one surviving pup.
Whose was that pup?
Perhaps one day your Chronicler will know.
‘The bitches have decided, give it to us,’ they said to Henbane, reluctant to go for her lest the pup was hurt.
‘No!’
It was then, with Henbane’s terrible cry, that Sleekit came out of the dark behind the grikes.
The only one there who had never had young, fighting as if all the world were her own pups.
‘No!’ she cried as well.
Fighting with all the life she had.
Fighting for the life of the pup she saw was left and Henbane held.
The scene she saw she had lived and heard a thousand times in the minutes that preceded it. Mallice dead; Harebell dead. Pups all … but of that we cannot bring ourselves to speak.
Henbane, potent, dangerous, stancing with the solitary pup that was left and shouting that great ‘No!’ at those males who loomed angrily over her, demanding the pup of her before they killed her.
‘No! It is not thine to take from me. It is my kin and it shall live!’
That was the scene that Sleekit routed.
And then those guardmoles found they faced not two females in disarray but two as one, defending a solitary pup. They might as well have faced an army as face that!
No training could have prepared a mole for the force that Sleekit was. No courage could have bettered the courage that Henbane had.
So Sleekit came and violently taloned one guardmole to one side, and then she and Henbane taloned at the other.
‘Take it, Henbane, take it now and run!’
So Sleekit cried and so Henbane did, taking the pup up by the neck and running from that burrow of blood; and Sleekit followed her. Their advantage was not much, but it was enough to give Sleekit hope that Henbane and the pup might be got away.
‘Run, Henbane! Run! When you see Holm, follow him and look not back. Oh run …’
Desperate, panting, the grikes now close behind and angrier than storms, Sleekit ran and urged Henbane on. Ahead, a shadow. The shadow moved, had eyes, saw, and heard. Holm was ready there.
‘Go, Holm, lead her, take her to safety now. Go!’
Then Holm turned and Henbane followed, but then turned briefly back as if hesitating at the final moment of escape.
‘You gave me your pups once and gave me life,’ gasped Sleekit, ‘now take this for yourself, Henbane, and give back to it what you once lost! Oh, run!’
Then Sleekit turned and as the two great guardmoles bore down upon her, she gathered all her strength and, raising her talons, launched back at them as she had done before, striking, and striking more, taloning, her strength, her speed, her instinct quite beyond their ken.
‘No!’ she cried, and even as they struck mortally, she had the sense and strength to retreat into that tunnel, to block it, to hold them off still more.
‘No!’ she cried again more quietly now.
Yet the last words that she spoke were not ‘No!’ or ‘Run!’ but gentle, and to a mole she had once known, and knew that when the Stone willed it, she would know again. ‘Mayweed …’ was the last she spoke.
But Henbane had never felt so alive as she did then. She ran out into the night where Holm had led her and quickly laid the pup down and stared at him.
‘What did Sleekit say to thee?’
‘She said I must not fight.’ Holm stared at Henbane who looked wild and dangerous and loomed over the pup as if she felt the whole of moledom endangered it, even him.
‘Leave me now, Holm. Make your own way from here, for what I must do I had better do alone. I thank you, Holm, and one day this pup I bear shall be told your name and he shall honour it. Now go, and look not afraid for you are as brave as anymole I ever knew.’
‘Not Tryfan,’ said Holm.
Henbane almost smiled.
‘Not him, perhaps!’ said Holm, looking at the pup that lay between her paws.
‘Him … ?’ she said, staring at the pup. Her voice was a mother’s voice, gentle and concerned.
Holm saw her take the pup from off the ground, saw it dangle in the night, saw her look to right and left.
‘Up’s best,’ he said, ‘then east.’
He watched her off to safety in the dark, and then turned and stared downslope and sighed, indeed he almost bleated with distress. He shook his head. He stared some more. He opened his mouth and closed it. He listened, and he swallowed, and he blinked in the dark.
Downslope below him at the tunnel entrance to where Mallice had been captive he could hear angry guardmole shouts. In the ground beneath his paws he could feel the vibration of moles in tunnels, big moles.
He slipped downslope in the dark as the most senior of the guardmoles emerged where Henbane and he had come.
‘Here!’ Holm dared to cry … And drawing the guardmoles away from where Henbane had gone, he darted among the shadows of rocks and scrub until, familiar with the ground, he left the guardmoles utterly confused, and made his way back into the grubby tunnel that led down to the garrison.
There, breathing heavily, he stopped and watched and before long his patience was rewarded.
‘Quick, out you lot!’ a guardmole shouted down the gloomy main tunnel.
‘But Sir, there’s nomole else on guard.’
Running paws, a hurried conference beneath where Holm watched down.
‘There’s trouble where they kept that Mallice bitch. The Master’s mad. He wants us out and searching for the Mistress Henbane who’s escaped.’
‘She won’t get far. But what about the ones in here? There’s nomole to cover for me.’
‘Threaten them. Tell them that if one so much as moves they’ll all be killed. We’ll not be long. Get on with it!’ He did, and Holm heard him snarl a warning to the captives there and then come on out again, and set off for the hunt.
Holm waited until he had gone, scrambled down with some difficulty from the narrow ledge where his fissured tunnel came, and hurried quickly to where the captives must be.
He found them cowering in a corner of their chamber, and felt scared himself just seeing them.
‘Come!’ he said. ‘Quick, quick!’
Two of the three shook their heads.
‘Please!’ he begged. ‘It’s safe for now.’
‘He’s Holm, the mole who came with Harebell,’ said Quince. ‘He’s all right.’
Holm stared and they stared, looking petrified. ‘They’ll kill us if we move,’ said one.
‘Come on!’ pleaded Holm. Then turning to Quince he said, ‘Make them, Miss!’
But she could not, and they would not and uselessly stared and trembled, and kept their snouts all low.
‘You come then,’ said Holm firmly to Quince.
Then he turned and ran and Quince, with a final look of despair at the trembling females, followed him.
As they went they heard the pawsteps of a mole coming towards them and Holm ran faster, gasping with fear as he hurried to get back to his point of entry into the tunnel. Quince, who was bigger than him, ran at his flank.
‘Here!’ said Holm triumphantly pointing up at the ledge he had scrambled down from. But his triumph faded, for try as he might he could not quite reach up to it, and the limestone walls which had been easy enough to scramble down were too slippery and awkward to climb up again.
In any case, it was too late, for round the corner came a guardmole.
‘What the … ?’ he shouted angrily when he saw them.
Holm gulped.
‘Luck’s run very out,’ he said.
‘Stay where you are and don’t move,’ said Quince of Mallerstang, an adept of an ancient martial art, very quietly. She went a pace forward and, as it seemed to Holm, leapt upward, turned slowly in the air and merely touched the guardmole on the flank with her paw. The guardmole fell back as if a hillside had hit him.
‘What’s … ?’ he began.
Quince struck him but once more and Holm could see the surprise in his eyes as he turned, fell back, smashed against the opposite side of the tunnel and slumped, unconscious for all Holm knew, upon the ground.
‘Oh dear,’ said Holm. More pawsteps were coming down the tunnel.
‘Is that the way you came in?’ said Quince, pointing a talon at the fissure out of Holm’s reach.
Holm nodded bleakly, and was still nodding as he felt a paw thrust under his rear and he was lifted bodily up and found himself scrabbling into the tunnel.
‘Pull me up,’ ordered Quince from below.
Holm turned round, peered down, and saw a paw reaching up to him.
‘Quick,’ said Quince.
The pawsteps were getting nearer, and across the tunnel the guardmole was beginning to stir and mutter darkly to himself.
Holm grabbed the paw and tried to pull Quince up.
‘You’re big, I’m small,’ he said hopelessly.
‘Imagine I’m something you want,’ said Quince.
Holm grabbed her paw tighter, closed his eyes, and with a mighty shout of, ‘Lorren!’ heaved Quince up and with a scraping of her back paws and another heave from Holm she was into the tunnel as well and they were gone.
Lucerne liked it not, not at all. He liked it so little that by dawn, and once he had got what information he could from the two senior guardmoles to whom he had entrusted the culling of the pups, he had them both snouted on the spot for failing him.
Then, when it was discovered that the mole Quince had escaped as well as Henbane and the pup, he had two more of the garrison guardmoles killed. So mad with anger was he that had he had the means he might have had everymole in the place killed there and then.
How much Terce liked it not was hard to say since when he was taken by Lucerne to see Mallice dead, and Harebell, and their pups all mingled, he said nothing, but stared and blinked. His daughter dead and a father blinks! For such is the training of a Twelfth Keeper!
‘Well?’ hissed Lucerne. ‘Henbane gone and with the one surviving pup. The Word speaks strange in this.’
‘Yes, Master,’ said Terce cautiously.
‘To find her myself … or to send others out for her. Which? There is much to do just now in moledom, much to consolidate. I have not time to find her, Terce. You warned that the Stone Mole might become a martyr, and so he might. We must stop that soon.’
But Terce was thinking, and nor was he so sure.
‘The pup that survived, Master, it might be thine,’ he said slowly. ‘If it is the mole Harebell’s, then it is still thy kin and a potential threat to us. All the more so in the apostate paws of Henbane.’
Terce watched the seed he planted take root and as he did so he mused upon the supreme power of the Word. With what elegance it was using Henbane to lead Lucerne towards the darkness of divinity! He, Terce, was but the guide along the way.
‘She will not kill the pup, Terce,’ said Lucerne. ‘She shall fawn and fondle it, as once she fondled me. She must be found and then the pup will be mine to train.’
‘I agree, and it must not be long, Master, before we take her lest she trains the pup to become your enemy. She is a Mistress of such arts. No, I should have pressed you harder to find Henbane when she first fled Whern. Nomole in moledom has greater powers than she, nomole but yourself. Worse by far is the undermining of your authority by the fact of Henbane’s existence, not forgetting that of the pup’s. This will be known, for rumours spread upon the wind of discontent, and discontent there always is where power is fragmented. Master, you must seek Henbane out, you and only you must kill her.’
The rooted seed thrived in the fomenting soil of Lucerne’s jealousy.
‘I saw her smile on the mole Harebell,’ he said, ‘and that troubles me. For that alone I will kill her.’
‘Master, you must do it.’
‘And who shall bear witness of it in moledom? How shall the memory of her be corrupted and its effect neutralised?’
‘I shall be with you. I, Terce, thy tutor and Twelfth Keeper shall bear witness for thee to the Keepers and sideem. By powers great shall you kill her, powers … divine.’
‘Divine,’ whispered Lucerne, eyes narrowed with bitter ambition. ‘I shall suck her power to me as once I sucked her milk.’
‘It is thy right,’ said Terce. ‘Her death shall be a fitting seal upon thy ascendancy to divine power.’
Lucerne’s eyes glittered.
‘It might be so,’ he conceded, and the rooted seed now began to flourish well. ‘I must find her, Terce. I must find her.’
‘Master, you must, and since the Word guides you, you shall. Nothing is more important to you now.’
‘And you, Terce? And Mallice? Can you forgive me that?’
‘She betrayed us, Master, and the Word. She is nothing to me.’
‘But her pup, if so the one Henbane took proves to be, what then?’
Terce permitted himself a smile.
‘Then I shall be … pleased, Master.’
‘And I, Twelfth Keeper, pleased for us both. It shall bind us again, and take this chill between us quite away. I like that not.’
‘Nor I, Master.’
‘Come, let us use our powers to find the former Mistress Henbane.’
He turned away, not seeing that behind him Terce’s eyes were black barbs of hate.