Dark eyes, cold eyes; eyes that did not blink but glittered as dark crystal in tunnels where light flees.
Eyes that followed Henbane, Mistress of the Word, and eyes she railed at. Since Lucerne had struck her she was like a vagrant mole who wanders distracted across a fell whose edge is a void named torment.
The eyes she saw were the eyes of the sideem who lauded her, who called her supreme, but in whom now she seemed to see only the accusations and contempt she felt for herself.
With Lucerne’s foul blow on the surface of the High Sideem at Whern, made as lightning struck and rain fell and he found his adult strength, age took Henbane by the throat. And age would never let her go again.
Doubt, loss, guilt, but most of all uncertainty, ate at her, maddened her, and in the tunnels in which she had reigned from the moment she killed her father Rune with her own talons she now saw only those eyes that stared, and blinked not. And she wandered, muttering and lonely, striking out and killing sometimes, but feeling the cold chill that age can bring.
Yet Henbane still moved with the same terrible grace that had always caused males to lust after her and feel a dreadful longing for something they felt she had and which, unconsciously perhaps, she gave the false promise of giving.
Since the birth of her litter by Tryfan her teats had shown, and they showed now when she crouched down: dark teats set in fuller paler fur that Lucerne had suckled into adulthood. Though her fur was still sleek and her body slim, maternity had given her a certain gravity and stillness which transmuted to something else: weariness with life.
Something had broken in her at that moment Lucerne struck her as if the structure of her mind and life had been held together by a brittle tension that, once cracked, destroyed her all.
Or nearly. She was not yet destroyed, though her life could never be the same. Yet she whom followers of the Stone reviled, she who caused such agony and sadness across moledom’s systems great and small; she whom all good-thinking moles abhorred … she did what many better moles could never do. She stared into the dark, still pool that was her life, saw evil, but did not flinch or turn away. She saw its darkness and did not die. She saw herself, and chose to live.
So bear with her now, not in pity or forgiveness – those were never qualities she herself possessed or expected in others – but in respect for the courage she showed when everything about herself seemed dark.
Was Henbane going mad? Many thought it, and some, encouraged by Lucerne, dared say it. But Henbane herself, knowing it was almost true and that her paws took her close to the very edge of the darkness she saw, fearful as the pup that once she was, had the courage to pause, and think, and begin to act.
Hence her muttering, hence her vagrancy; hence as well the fact that even those sideem who said she veered to madness dared not yet deny her sovereignty. While Lucerne watched, and waited, hoped, and began to plot her end, Henbane dared to do the hardest thing anymole can do. Broken, vulnerable, despairing, weak, old, hurting, with nowhere yet to go, she dared start life again.
But how? In a most extraordinary and courageous way. The Mistress of the Word dared cast the Word from off herself, and she did it by living in her mind one final time the vile traditions she had been taught, first by her mother Charlock, then by her father Rune, and forcing herself to see them for what they were.
To make sense of Henbane’s tragedy a mole of the Stone, used to light and love and pleasant ways, must dare to travel back in time as Henbane did and learn how the Word was made in those distant years before the tunnels of Whern had heard the sound of the paws of mole.
Long had they waited for their time, with but the sound of chill water to drip the millennia away.
Blizzard snows come early above Whern, violent and heavy, and at the very dawn and beginning of its dubious celebrity, its fells were blanketed in white with just chill wind enough to stir the stiff, dead matt grass tops, and whisper warnings of the harsh winter centuries to come.
It was soon after such a fall, indeed on Longest Night itself, that Scirpus first led his disciples, who numbered twenty-four, to the very edge of Whern where, under the overhang of Kilnsey Crag, he left them sheltering and went on alone.
There, more dead of starvation than alive, more despairing than hopeful, his disciples first heard the rush and roar of subterranean water, and the graceful whine of the limestone wind as they awaited his return on a day of unnatural light and dark portents. Waterfalls froze, rocks and moles had shadows, yet the sun never shone; an unaccountable fear fell among the disciples.
That day which marks the start of Longest Night, when the season came to that threshold which marks a change towards light once more, Scirpus journeyed on alone up into those tunnels, to find a place to pray and seek guidance. Guidance he must have found of a most sinister kind, for he made his way without getting lost into the heart of the High Sideem, and from there took the dangerous unknown route to the great chamber on the far side of which, beyond the lake in whose dark light it is eternally reflected, rises the Rock of the Word. There he bathed in the chill waters and after due meditation and ascetic subjugation, had the first of his twelve revelations of the Word, from which the Book of the Word itself came.
These twelve revelations were known as the Twelve Cleave of the Word, and disciples of the Word believe they were scrivened for Scirpus’s eyes alone across the face of the Rock after which, he having learned them, they faded away. For twelve days, with only the icy water of the lake for sustenance, Scirpus stayed before the Rock, and on each day witnessed the revelation of a cleave. It is said that for each day Scirpus remained before the Rock one of his disciples died. Even as he talked a disciple might suddenly seem to stare, his mouth still open with the word he was about to speak, his body stiff and cold; his eyes unshut. Dead.
Twenty-four had reached Kilnsey alive with Scirpus, but by the time he returned to them, his knowledge of the Book of the Word completed, only twelve remained. But worse. To survive, the living twelve had eaten their dead comrades.
The survivors he led back to the High Sideem where, one by one, he took them before the Rock itself and there taught them a single cleave. On pain of death and before the Rock itself, each one swore his cleave would not be taught to a single one of the other twelve. Nor could a cleave be scrivened down. It would be a secret and unwritten Book, living in the memories of twelve chosen moles, or Keepers, with only one, the Master – Scirpus at first – knowing all its words and wisdom.
The early history and lore of Whern is much concerned with the story of the need to protect this arcane knowledge, for clearly, potent though an unscrivened Book may be, it loses all power when part or all of its words are lost through death of mole.
It was to protect the Word that the sideem and the grikes were formed. The sideems’ role was within Whern itself, the grikes’ role was to protect it from without.
Scirpus ordered that moles be brought to Whern and trained in the cleave of their tutors, who were the Keepers of the Cleave. Each of the Twelve were to have novice sideem, who bit by bit would learn part of their Keeper’s cleave. In this way was knowledge of each cleave dispersed and made safe, yet nomole save the Master himself knew – or had power to know – all the twelve cleave that lived on through the sideem and Keepers.
But the time must come when novices are made initiate, and so arose the rite of the anointing of the sideem, which among all the traditions of Whern is one of the most vile. Of that dangerous and ancient rite we shall have more to say.
Scirpus knew that the sideem would need protection from their enemies, the followers of the Stone led then by the scribemoles of distant Uffington. In those days they were more powerful and active than they later became, and persecuted the Scirpuscans even to the very portals of Whern itself. It was to protect the sideem that Scirpus made the grikes.
Many are the legends of how the grikes were made, but most agree that they are a race he spawned himself upon a female culled from the nearby system of Grysdale Lathe. The female was his consort, his release, and among the pups she had (all but this one denied by Scirpus) was one touched vilely by the Word. A mutant throwback to some monster strain, deformed and horrible; but his filthy blood was strong. They named him Grike and Scirpus trained him in the killing arts.
His intelligence was cunning more than clever, but his loyalty knew no bounds and to him, to satisfy his infernal lusts, captive females were sent from the systems nearby. Then worse: corrupted by stories of power and perversion up in Whern, drawn by fascinations whose basis is still hidden and unknown outside the scrivenings of Whern, females came of their own accord to mate with the beast called Grike. And in them he spawned a ghastly family of moles, squat and lustful, of talons merciless and with a creed that said, ‘Right is the Word and right are we that follow it’.
Grike’s sons were the first generation of grikes, and from his seed, all too recognisable to this very day in many who despise the blood they bear, all other grikes did come.
Mutant were they, of the blood of Scirpus, of the fell darkness of Whern; born of a rapine, cruel heritage whose only credits are loyalty and obedience to the Word and the sideem they were first nurtured to serve.
All this Henbane had always known, though by her day the role of sideem and grike had spread and changed. She had been told it as a story that glorified great Scirpus, and brought honour and a fitting menace to the Word. But now, thinking of it once again, she saw it all afresh and understood that as a speck of poison may befoul the deepest pool so had those two groups of moles, one of blinkered disciples and the other of ruthless servants, befouled moledom’s once peaceful and pleasant land.
It was on all this horrid past that Henbane now began to dwell, grateful only perhaps that, so far as she could tell, grike blood mingled not within her own. Small consolation, though, in the deepest of her tormented night. For her blood was Rune’s and dread Charlock’s and her inheritance was Scirpus’s own realm.
But if she was corrupted by it, what was her escape? And where to? These questions were, as yet, unanswerable. For now she was preoccupied with the realisation that the tradition she had inherited, the dark arts she had learned, had made her make evil the one pure thing she felt she had ever made: Lucerne.
For corrupt him she had. With her body she did, encircling him in her own incestuous pride, letting him pass through puphood to youth, and then towards adulthood as one who touched her and knew her as only lovers should. Doing to him what her parents had done to her.
But worse she knew about herself. As Lucerne had grown, but even before his first speech had come, she chose as his tutor, in full knowledge of what she did, Terce, most senior of the Keepers, and most odious.
Terce liked young moles. Indeed, the sideem that served him were always especially young, all clever, some beautiful. But it was as if his sideem career had been directed by the Word itself towards the sole object and purpose of preparing him as tutor for one as full of the potential for evil as Lucerne.
‘Yet he was not evil before that mole first touched him … whispered Henbane in her new-found guilt for, among her worse memories of things she did that could never be undone, was that night when knowing what she did she yielded her only pup to Terce …
The folios that record the coming of Terce to Whern have been destroyed, probably by his own paw. The minutes of the meeting of the Keepers wherein he was made Twelfth elect have been destroyed – by his paw. All screenings relating to Terce’s role as Keeper, and tutor to Lucerne, have been ‘mislaid’; his work, too.
But in outline at least his past is known, though his parents’ names are lost. Of humble birth in nearby Cray, north of Whern, he came. Chosen by his predecessor he learnt the hardest cleave, which is the twelfth, in but eight days. To curb his ambition and his pride he was given the task of sorting out the indulgences of the grike guardmoles of Wharfedale, and, fatally, his single request for a mole to help him was granted. The mole he chose was Lathe, the perfect subordinate. Cruel and unscrupulous was he and, with no more desire but to serve the mole who gave him power, most reliable. Oh yes, those two fulfilled their task and brought the grikes back in control. But worse, they gained dominion over them, some say with Rune’s agreement, others say without. The fact was, though, that in the long days when Henbane, with Wrekin as her general and Weed as her sideem aide, conquered moledom’s southern part, Terce it was who gained power among the Keepers. Clever Terce it was who stayed clear at the time of Henbane’s accession and Rune’s demise, and consolidated his hold and was the first to offer his services to Henbane.
‘Let me tutor thy son Lucerne,’ he said, ‘and he shall learn more than anymole but you.’
‘He shall be Master when I have done,’ she said. And he agreed that Lucerne would. For just as Lathe had no desire to take the place of Terce – his glory being in the shadow of his sponsor’s flank – so Terce had no desire to wrest the Mastership from its Mistress for himself. Though whether he might wrest it from her for Master Lucerne was a very different thing. He would.
‘Wilt show me the pup, Mistress?’
Which Henbane did, ushering the silent and still timid Lucerne before the intimidating senior Keeper.
Terce gazed at him and reached out a paw.
Lucerne did not shudder at his touch, but stared at him, eyes glittering with pride.
‘I would have him learn thy cleave,’ said Henbane.
Terce gazed more. Lucerne did not drop his gaze. Terce smiled and Lucerne returned the smile. Terce was pleased to see the youngster unafraid.
‘He shall learn it well,’ said Terce. ‘I shall teach him all I know.’
‘Do it harshly, as I was taught,’ said Henbane. ‘But let him still see me.’
‘Yield him to me on Longest Night,’ said Terce, ‘and I shall make him ready to be Master of the Word, first among his peers, before everymole but thee.’
‘Let him have companions for his learning, for I had none when I was young … and regret it now.’
‘I shall choose them well. But two only, as tradition dictates. And Mistress …’ Terce paused, and seemed hesitant.
‘Keeper, speak plain.’
‘Then Mistress, let him suckle thee beyond his puppish years. It will bind him to thee in ways deeper than words can say, but finally it will make him hate thee too, which hate I shall divert to punishment of the followers of the Stone. In such teachings has the twelfth cleave made me adept.’
‘I am aware of it,’ said Henbane, ‘and had already hesitated to wean him. Now I shall not, and nor does he seem to wish it. Even now he sleeps at my teat. Till Longest Night then, Terce, and after that to thee.’
As Terce left the Mistress with her pup he heard that vile refrain, ‘Come suckle me and be my love,’ and with what relief he smiled! Of what lay behind that smile, and how before he died Rune laid plans with Terce to see a final glorification of his name, we still must tell. Henbane knew that not. But she was right to sense that in Terce lay evil deep, and blasphemies beyond recall, and plots that entwined back in time even to Scirpus himself. Oh yes, we are not finished with discovery of evil yet. And the force for good might seem poor indeed if, so far as Whern is concerned, its only champion was but the flawed Mistress, Henbane.
Terce smiled because he saw a plot of Rune’s continue to unfold. A plot that used Henbane more vilely even than she had yet been used. A plot that would elevate her son Lucerne, and so herself, but most of all Rune, Father of them all, beyond even the Mastership, and forever beyond mole’s ability to dethrone. The first place Rune would wish to be; the last that Henbane, touched by a new light it seemed, would surely wish to be.
So tremble now at Terce’s unseen smile as Henbane talks of suckling. And hope the Stone may yet find champions stronger than we have seen.
Which brings us back to where we do not wish to go …
We said before Terce cast his shadow across these Chronicles that, of all the rites, the anointing of the novice sideem was one of the most corrupt.
The other is that known as the secret rite by which one Keeper succeeds another, and it goes back to the very beginning of the coming of Scirpus when those twelve disciples died in the shadow of Kilnsey Crag. Shudder at what we must tell: even the sideem whisper it among themselves and look here and there in horror. A Keeper eats the body of the mole he follows.
This was not the only cannibalism of Whern. On Longest Night, to commemorate the revelation of the Word to Scirpus, a sideem – originally one anointed, but now one chosen by the Twelve – was sacrificed before the Rock, his corpse divided into twelve, each Keeper whispering a filthy rubric as he took his bloody portion: ‘Oh Word, by his body I thee worship; oh Word, by his blood I thee worship; oh Word, by his death our lives renew in thee.’
Secret and dark that bloody rite became, and fatal was the shadow under which the Twelve lived out their arcane and ritualistic lives, the principal purpose of which was to keep the Word alive and pass it on by rote to novitiate sideem. Their lives dominated by a eucharistic rite in which a mole who has entrusted his life and learning to them must die that the Word might live.
Keeping this nightmare rite in our unwilling minds, we now come, just as tormented Henbane did, to how Rune took power. Though many are the dark stories told of Rune’s ascent, few are the moles who know that one Longest Night he was the sideem chosen to die. Aye, taken among the Twelve Keepers before the Rock of the Word, and there arraigned before the Master, Slithe.
There seems no doubt that Rune was chosen to die because they feared him, and most of all Slithe himself, who rightly saw in Rune a mole whose intelligence and purpose was too great for it to be long denied. Every task set him he had fulfilled, everything he had to learn he learnt even as it was told him. As for the notorious trial of the Clints, that maze of surface tunnels carved in limestone which moles must traverse before their anointing, he mastered it despite false instruction, the only mole until then ever so to do.
A second attempt on his life was with talons, the sound to be drowned by the rushing water they were near, in which, no doubt, his body would be thrown afterwards. The attack was ordered by some of the Keepers themselves. What really happened none but Rune ever knew, and he never told. Eight attacked him, all were drowned. Aye, moles, all were drowned.
It was after that that the Master sent him into the unknown south to report on the plagues and there, hopefully, to die forgotten. There he nearly died, at the talons of Tryfan’s father Bracken on the high Eastside of Duncton Wood. Nearly but not quite, for moleyears later he reappeared at Whern, his reputation great now among the younger sideem, his knowledge of moledom unique, and his ambition feared.
The last attempt to have him die was on Longest Night itself when he was summoned to the Rock to be sacrificed.
Even as the Master spoke out the ordination of the Twelve Keepers – that Rune was ‘honoured’ to be chosen so to die and be the symbol of life to come for other moles – Rune’s black eyes shone and his fur glossed darkly. Under sentence of death, and that imminent, his mind, like his body, thrived.
The arcane ritual he had guessed, for the generations of young sideem had seen one or other of their colleagues disappear at Longest Night. To be so chosen was an unspoken fear, but for a maddened and idiot few whose belief in the Word was so profound and their need for discipline so strong that a sentence of cruel death in the Word’s name seemed like an honour.
Rune was too intelligent for that. And now, even as the Master spoke, the Keepers’ eyes narrowed and their tongues flicked across their mouths and their talons fretted at the arid floor of the Chamber of the Rock, he revelled in the challenge of turning terminal disadvantage to lifelong gain, and, narrow though the way, slim though his chance of success, doubtful the outcome, he found his route and took it.
Its way was words, its authority the Word, its power that which he invested in himself, his strength their weakness, his weapon their own hypocrisy, his method, attack.
‘Blasphemy,’ he said quietly, the accusative word whispering about the chamber until it was almost, but not quite, gone, ‘would be in my death here as sacrifice, great though the honour. Honour for me, moles, yet dishonour for any who took my life.’
He smiled as if to apologise for the trouble his words might cause them, but what menace was in that smile! He flexed his sharp talons too, as if to remind them that, if pressed, then in pursuit of honouring the Word he would kill before being killed. It was enough to intimidate the older members of the Twelve, and a mole as acute as Rune could see which among them was weak and which was not.
‘Blasphemy? Dishonour?’ hissed Slithe who, had he been a stronger mole and Rune less strong, would have killed him then and there. But no, he weakened as moles usually did before Rune’s gaze and voice.
‘Yes, dishonour,’ said Rune, and before the stir of dismay among the Keepers could turn to attack he firmly reminded them of the origins of the sacrifice, and that it was only in recent decades that the Keepers had devolved the sacrifice to a mole outside their circle not, he said (as was really the case, as well he knew), for fear but rather because none among them would, for modesty, take so great an honour.
‘Whatmole would be so vain as to suggest himself to die?’ asked Rune. All the time he watched them closely to find the weakest one, a mole least liked by the others, a mole to whom their dire choice could turn. But before his arguments reached that far he made certain with stares subtle and sinister that each one of them thought that he was the one this clever, strong sideem would manoeuvre the others to kill. So each knew fear, and each felt the power of Rune’s threat.
Argument set in, fuelled by dismay and fear, an argument among twelve Keepers the consequence of which was one must die. Upon each other others picked, and vote after vote was tied, until at last the Keepers turned to Slithe to make a nomination. So one was chosen and clever Rune was invited to kill him and join in the feast.
Nor did Rune stop there. Inevitably the remaining Keepers chose him to make up their number and so Rune gained access to ultimate power.
It did not take him long to depose the Master, Slithe himself, and he began to lay his plans for the expansion into moledom of the Word’s great power based on the experience learnt in his travels south. He did not yet take up the Mastership himself for his power was not consolidated nor the moles he needed quite in place. But some time in that period of upheaval and change he brought in Terce as the youngest Twelfth Keeper for many a cycle.
It was in that period that Rune broke the sideem rule of chastity, daring to cite Scirpus himself as the precedent, and took to himself a mate called Charlock. She bore Henbane, and raised her privily to darkness in ignorance of who her father was. Charlock taught Henbane that her first and only loyalty was to the Master and that to his lusts she must yield. Which Henbane, having killed her mother, did, not knowing that to the crime of matricide she now added the violation of incest with her father. There was but one consolation among all this filth, which was that Henbane was never made with pup by Rune. Nor indeed by any of the males she subsequently took, of whom there were many, mercy be upon their shadowed souls.
But for great Tryfan, all who knew the pleasures of her body died, one by one, killed by Henbane after she had suffered them to exhaust their pleasure, then later, when she tired of killing, by the sterile eldrene, Fescue among them, who vented their distorted lusts on those already used by their Mistress. But in that time Henbane learnt the killing arts and it was said that no female ever learned to kill a male more quick than she, and, when she wished, more slow.
All this was Lucerne’s loathsome heritage, and brooding over it that June Henbane saw clearly and ever more clearly how it had infected her rearing of Lucerne, and was the necessary prelude to the freedoms over him she so fatally gave cold Terce.
On much else did maddened Henbane dwell and Whern was thrown into disarray as she wandered its tunnels and seemed to see accusation in every face. For June is a busy month when the sideem prepare for the rite of the anointing at Midsummer of those novice sideem who have survived the trial of the Clints.
All this needed the Mistress’s attention and approval, and in that Henbane held power still, and knew it. For without completion of the Midsummer rite the younger sideem would not be legitimate and any succession Lucerne had plotted for, which depended on such younger moles, would be weakened. Nor had he himself been anointed, though many argued, including Terce, that Lucerne need not submit to the Midsummer test. The risks might be too great.
For all her seeming madness Henbane understood the power she still held, and that the sideem would not accept Lucerne unless he had been anointed. So they put up with her madness as she wandered, scraping her paws against the sacred walls of the High Sideem and shouting out of dark sound, and incest, and two lost pups, and much more that ate age into her.
But as Midsummer drew nigh, and certain preparatory rites had been left undone by her, the Keepers sent Lucerne and Terce to talk to her.
‘Mother,’ Lucerne began, hypocritical affection dripping from every pore, ‘you are still Mistress and you have duties to perform. I …’
‘Yes, my son?’ she said.
‘I know not why I struck you –’ And though there was no apology in the words, he put it in his voice.
It was Terce she watched as Lucerne spoke these words. Apology? Hypocrisy? Half of one and half of another, that was what she judged. But more than that she saw in Terce’s eyes belief that if not quite mad she was no longer strong. Strong enough, she wondered, for what?
She smiled because she knew. Not strong enough to exploit what Terce had suggested Lucerne do and did no more, which was to suckle her until he was an adult. ‘It will bind him to thee in ways deeper than words can say,’ Terce had said. But now, guessed Henbane, Terce adjudged that that was what she could no longer exploit: too weak, too dazed, they supposed, no doubt. But Henbane knew she could. Not now, but one day. Aye, one day; Lucerne still longed for the comfort she could give but which his pride and growing status could not allow him to ask for or to take.
The comfort and potential of that thought would keep her sane, and give her strength and, in some way she could not understand but felt in that remote and tiny part of her that still was whole, would guide her towards something that might take her out of torment yet.
‘I have been ill,’ she said at last and to their relief, ‘yet now the Word does give me strength. For now, with thy help, Terce, and thine, dear son, we shall trust the Word to guide us to the Midsummer rite, and make those preparations we must make.’
She was glad to see they did not believe she would survive. She was glad because their mistake would be her saving yet. They would use her to legitimise the novices during the rite to come and then … discard her.
‘Come, mother,’ said Lucerne, his paw to her flank, ‘we shall help thee be Mistress once more.’
‘You shall?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
But she knew his hypocrisy better than anymole, for of that art she must now be Mistress indeed, and for the few moleweeks to Midsummer so she must remain.