Duncton Found (14 page)

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 scrivenings 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.