“Do not be afraid,” said Beechen, reaching out a reassuring paw to Sleekit. “This is the way we must go.”
Even as they started to move, and their paws scuffed the hard uneven floor, dark sound reverberated back at them from the wall and to Sleekit it seemed that the air of the chamber was full of the violence of things hurled by a wind whose sole purpose was to destroy her spirit and break her body.
Only the form of Beechen ahead of her kept her from losing herself in the confusion of sound, only the touch of his paw kept her on course. And then he stopped suddenly, as if he heard something beyond the dark sound, and something even more fearful. Then, horror in her heart, she heard it too.
Desperate pawsteps, and a desperate crying voice. A mole in terrible desolate fear. A mole lost who called a name.
“What is the name he calls?” said Beechen, turning to her.
Louder it came, nearer, from the very portal towards which they struggled, pawsteps and a cry, lost and nearly hopeless now.
Then she knew the name it called. It was her own.
“Sleekit! Sleekit, help me now! Help me for I am lost, lost... Sleekit... help....”
Then slowly through the portal he came, pushing a way through the death and destruction there, now with the strength of desperation, now feebly with the weakness of hopelessness. Mayweed. Route-finder. Lost. Speaking in a voice that was not his normal one, yet more nearly his own than any he had ever had. Poor Mayweed.
Sleekit looked, and looked away in fear. She did not have the strength to go further across the Chamber of Dark Sound and help him.
“Go to him!” Beechen cried to her, as she knew he would.
Again she looked, again stared helplessly, again she looked away.
“I cannot help him,” she whispered. “The sound is too dark for me.”
She could not move. It was like a freezing day in winter, when the cold is so penetrating it stops a mole’s mind and he sees all move slowly and in silence beyond his power of control. Thus she watched as Mayweed stumbled into the Chamber of Dark Sound and saw as he staggered here and there along the edge of the scrivened wall, crying out in agony, seeking with his paws to stop the sounds that were destroying him, yet still calling for her. He seemed blinded by the noise, for he did not see them where they stanced immobile watching him.
Until before her eyes poor Mayweed slowed and collapsed and began to cry, terrible cries that were like those of a pup lost from everymole. A pup lost in darkness. Sleekit looked away again.
“Help him,” commanded Beechen then. “One chance more you have.”
Help him? So Beechen must have spoken – though so strange that chamber’s sounds, and so confusing, she felt it was the scrivens of the wall that spoke.
But help him she could not. Her only saving in that place was Beechen’s proximity, as if about him was a sense of Silence that gave her space just to survive. To leave him and go to Mayweed was too much for her to do.
“Help him,” Beechen said again.
Mayweed was a lost mole now, lost in some memory of puphood, lost again in that place in the Slopeside of Buckland from which once he had only just been rescued, and from whose darkness his life had ever since been one long striving to escape.
“Sleekit, he was lost, and found, and now is lost again. I cannot save him, I can save nomole except that knowing the Stone through me they may save themselves. For this have I come, to show how we may help each other. You and Mayweed are as one, so find the courage to leave me here and go to him. Use all your training, all your love, and go to him where so long ago his mother left him. Help him. Teach him as he has taught so many others it can be done. Here he is weak. Here he is dying. Through you he can survive and be stronger still that one day he shall have the strength for his final task, which is to guide Tryfan into a darkness beyond imagining.”
“His final task?” whispered Sleekit, knowing that if she took her eyes off Mayweed now she would not have the courage to look at him again.
“As a mole is loved so shall he love, so show him the way now, Sleekit. I think he had come in search of us. He came to find us and nomole knew better than he the dangers of this place or the torments it might bring. Despite that he has dared come and it has nearly killed him. For you and me he did it. His love has given you the strength to help him now. Use it, return it to him.”
Then in that dreadful place Beechen stood aside, and for a time Sleekit felt the full force of dark sound upon her and thought that she would die. Yet somehow discipline and faith came to her, one learnt of the Word, the other discovered of the Stone, until with Mayweed’s cry weakening before her she found the strength to advance through the blizzard of darkness that beset her, and go to him.
“My dear, my dear...” she said, and she reached him, and put her paws to him, and comforted him, and like a pup he wept and cried that he was lost.
“Yes, help him so,” said Beechen, and with love she did, and held him where he had fallen, and encircled him, and whispered safety to him, and the security of love.
Then all about them the dark sound began to die, and peace fell on that place, and from the eyes of Beechen came a light of love that seemed caught in the scrivens of the walls of the chamber, a light that was the light of Silence.
Then the Stone Mole went to those two striving moles and touched each of them, and they felt a healing in their hearts and knew that they were safe, and the chamber held fear for them no more.
“Follow me,” said Beechen then, and weakly they did, and it seemed that each pawstep they made, each piece of debris they cleared to make a path back through the portal, brought forth a gentle sound from the scrivened wall above.
They passed through into the Chamber of Roots, and paused there within sight of the roots that formed a vertical and ever-shifting screen through which only moles of faith might go.
Mayweed, half supported by Sleekit, said nothing, but stared at the roots which were lit, it seemed, by the luminescent tendrils of the smallest of their number high in the chamber’s roof, carrying some light of their own, or taking from the surface above something of the moonlight there.
Beechen seemed barely interested in the roots, but Sleekit noticed that when, briefly, his gaze fell on them they stilled, absolutely, and all sound went, and an enchantment of Silence fell over them and the chamber they commanded.
Beechen sighed and said, “Come, we have heard and seen enough. This chamber can wait its time once more when Duncton shall be found again. Our tasks are different. Come, we must go to the surface and make our way to Barrow Vale, where our friends are concerned for us.”
They reached the surface, and, before they set off downslope, they turned back to touch the moonstruck Stone and all stanced together in the night with the Stone’s light upon them.
“I shall never forget you, nor this place, nor the moles who have taught me so much,” said Beechen suddenly.
Neither said a word, but both came close and knew that already Beechen was beginning to say goodbye to the system that had made him, and they sensed that the time for his leaving was drawing near.
Mayweed separated from Sleekit and stared up at the Stone. Still he said nothing.
“What are you thinking, my love?” asked Sleekit. Tears were on brave Mayweed’s face.
He spoke no long words in reply. Nor strange words.
Nor smiled, or leered, or grinned, or anything of that. Yet he was more Mayweed himself than humble he had ever been.
“What do you feel?” whispered Beechen. It might have been the Stone itself that spoke.
“Feel?” repeated Mayweed in wonder. “I feel no fear.”
“And you, Sleekit?”
“The same.”
With his left paw Beechen reached out to Mayweed, with his right to Sleekit.
“Tell nomole of this, or of what I shall say now. Soon I shall leave and travel where I must. Both of you shall come with me, one all the way and the other but to see us safely begin a journey
of which all moledom must know. Mayweed, you shall be the one who must turn back. With Tryfan lies your task for he shall need your guidance one last time.”
“Shall I see Mayweed after that?” asked Sleekit fearfully.
Beechen shook his head.
“The time remaining in Duncton is all the time you have. You have heard Silence today, you have seen light, and you shall not want other company than your own. This shall be your time and shall prepare you for the parting soon to come.”
“But whatmole shall need me so much that I must leave Mayweed?” said Sleekit, staring at the Stone.
Tryfan’s own shall need you. And I shall need you. Many shall need you.”
“But...” began Sleekit.
But Beechen gazed on her and she was silent.
“Tell nomole of the dark sound you have conquered or what I have said to you. Nomole, not even Tryfan yet, will understand. Now... we must go to Barrow Vale. Take me there for I feel weak now and need your help. Guide me there, and then be to yourselves alone until the time comes that your final tasks begin.”
“When will that be?” asked Sleekit.
“When the beech leaves of this High Wood begin to fall, and autumn heralds the coming of moledom’s darkest winter.”
Above them in the night, wind stirred at the high branches of the beech trees and down into the clearing a few leaves fell, their green turned prematurely to brown.
They turned to Beechen and saw in the white moon’s light that his fur was drenched with sweat, and his eyes fearful, and that he was fatigued beyond sleep. Then together they helped him turn from the Stone, and led him downslope towards Barrow Vale.
Chapter Fifteen
Marram’s alarming discovery that the grikes’ observation and patrolling of the cross-under had become more strict, and that they might be poised to re-enter Duncton Wood, was but part of an extraordinary resurgence of the grikes about which much of moledom, to its cost, already knew.
The magic calm of Duncton’s summer years, which had made possible that slow education of Beechen in the true ways of mole, community and Stone, would have seemed but a lost dream to many beyond the system’s boundaries.
Long before those first early autumn leaves fell at Beechen’s paws in the Stone clearing that August night and warned of harder times to come, the harder times were already spreading fast from the north; with that a new name for horror spread forth as well.
Lucerne’s.
“Yes, that’s the one. Great Henbane’s son. Master of the Word soon, if not already. Oh yes, accepted by the Keepers. He’ll change things a bit...” the gossip went.
For those quiet followers, ignored or beset according to the effectiveness of the eldrenes who ruled their systems for the Word, it was becoming a name to whisper in terror and dread. “Change” in Lucerne’s paws meant persecution once again, but worse than before; far, far worse.
While for those moles of the Word who wanted a quiet life, and wished to maintain the lip service to the Word and ordinary indulgence many such invaders had assumed since Henbane’s days, it was a name that struck fear in their lazy hearts; and pushed them into arbitrary acts of violence and suppression against known followers of the Stone to prove that they were still capable of doing their jobs.
But for zealots of the Word, always few, not always in power in the systems where they lived, it was a name that gave new hope of judgements to be made, of just Atonements to be enforced, and the chance to gain power once more and renew the faltering glory and power of the Word.
“Master Lucerne, to thy cause I shall dedicate my life, to thee only, Master, blessed Master, the Word’s gift to us....”
So did reverent zealots whisper his name, and so was it encouraged to spread before and ahead of the vanguard of Lucerne’s young sideem who came down upon moledom from the north rapidly that summer, moving from one system to the next as they began their new and ruthless work....
But before we turn our disconsolate and dispirited paws in pursuit of Lucerne’s sideem, and wonder in horror at what they did and how they did it, it is best that we do not lose sight of what lay behind the young Master’s remorseless drive to bring the Word to eternal ascendancy and cause faith in the Stone to be forever broken.
Let there be no doubt about the monstrous powers for leadership and organisation that Lucerne’s bloodline and training had given him. This was no ordinary mole. This was no ordinary evil. This was no shadow that the light of the next rising sun would cause to flee and be quickly forgotten.
This was a corrupting, infecting darkness that might – nay, that surely would – enshadow moledom forever, and leave it a stinking, fetid place where the light of love and faith had quite gone out. This was the darkness beyond the Stone’s light finally come to earth in molish form. This was dark sound corporeal.
Of such evil was Lucerne.
So far as we are fortunate in anything to do with such a mole, we are fortunate to have the record Terce made of those times, routinely scrivening, day by fell day, the decisions and actions which the new leader of Whern took – though often called “Master” his inauguration was still to come. Yet he was Master in all but name.
We have seen already that for Terce the rise to power of Lucerne was part of a scheme decreed by Rune in the days when Henbane was with pup, and when Rune guessed his own days might be few.
Rune did not imagine or even guess that he would die at Henbane’s own talons. Rather, his intention was to choose the best of her pups for nurturing towards his final and obsessive ambition, and hope he had at least a little time to set his nominee on the way to power before he died. But though he could not guess his end, he made plans against it being premature. Terce was that contingency.
In finding Terce, and giving him penultimate power, Rune showed his genius for discovering and making loyal those who could best serve his purpose. This is not easy for any leader of moles, whether he leads for ill or good. Great subordinates must subsume themselves to their leader’s purpose, and while showing intelligence and initiative must yet be loyal and subservient to the higher aim.
But already Rune had shown that when he needed to he could find the mole who served his purpose best. His consort Charlock had known how to rear Henbane to make her all-powerful to all but Rune himself. Weed had known how to spy on Henbane and yet keep her trust. Wrekin, the great mind behind her invading army, had known how to stay impervious to Henbane’s charm and yet retain her support for the control of the guardmoles that he needed.
As Rune judged moles’ strengths, so he judged the moment of their weakening, when they lost their value to him, and then he took power back from them. So he arranged for Wrekin to be dismissed. So he judged well when Henbane should be summoned back to Whern, where, we must assume, he deliberately allowed the mating with Tryfan to take place. Did he foresee the need for new blood in the line? Did he instinctively understand what damage it might do to the Stone’s power if the very mole that must one day lead the Word’s final assault on the Stone was spawn of great Tryfan of Duncton, noblest of the ancient Seven?
We know, from Terce’s scrivenings, that Rune did. We know for sure that his intent was to choose one of Henbane’s pups and make him Master.
Though he died before he could see them reared, so well had he chosen his Twelfth Keeper in Terce that his design stayed alive in powerful and remorseless paws. All unknowing, even after she seemed to have broken free of her father by killing him, Henbane allowed Rune, through Terce, to sway her life. The Word did well the day it left Lucerne alone to suck her teat. Terce, adept at the persuasive arts, smiled at how easy it would be to take control of Lucerne and corrupt him to the Word.
But how much more he must have rejoiced in that mole’s formidable intelligence and driving purpose, and found in it proof of the Word’s wisdom and divinity; and confirmation therefore of Rune’s as well.
Divinity? Rune? Aye, that, in a word, was Rune’s purpose: divinity. To corrupt even the corrupting Word to
serve him and all his kin forever more. To establish himself as Father of the Masters yet to come who would be makers of the eternal golden age of the Word. Thereby would his seed be most glorious and alive and hallowed for all time. Nomole can live forever, but through others’ bodies Rune sought to live and make of himself what even Scirpus had never become – accepted as divine of the Word.
Such had been Rune’s aim, and such now was the sole intent of Terce’s life through Lucerne. In Lucerne, therefore, Terce found the perfect agent for Rune’s posthumous purpose; while in Terce, Lucerne found the perfect agent for his own. It was a marriage made in darkness which, if it was ever to be put asunder and moledom to be saved, would need more than ordinary mole, and more than ordinary circumstance.
Knowing this (and guessing too that there might be more to Terce’s plan than we yet know) we will not be surprised at the speed and ruthlessness with which Lucerne and Terce affirmed their hold on Whern.
Three Keepers opposed Lucerne (and if they had not he would have claimed they had, to give him opportunity early on to demonstrate his ruthless purpose for the Word, and to intimidate those who might yet harbour discord!).
Lucerne did not stain his own talons with these early opponents’ blood but, rather, let it be known through Terce that it was not the will of the Word that such moles live.
Nor was Terce ever seen to murder, though his own profane delight in blood, the murky sadistic doings that he did, would in time be known, and feared, and were a part of his campaign on Rune’s behalf.
No matter. Two moles had the ear and trust of Lucerne and Terce: Clowder and Mallice, and both even from those early days took up special roles which, as time went on, would expand as Lucerne’s power did. Clowder became to Lucerne what Wrekin had been to Henbane: campaigner, general of his forces, conductor of his strategies, second in command of war and fighting.
But Mallice... there is no equivalent of her in all Whern’s history. Consorts to the Master there had been; female Keepers there had been; “eldrene” to the sideem Henbane had herself been. But not all three in one, responsible for what a mole might call the execution of the dark interior of Lucerne’s policies.