Duncton Found (22 page)

So, that Midsummer morn, Henbane spoke.

“Begin,” she said.

None but a sideem who has survived the ritual can know the shudder of awe, fear, dread, excitement and terror that overcomes the novices at that moment:
“Begin!”

Lives hang now in the balance, and as some will surely
end
before the day is out, so, truly, do many indeed
begin
again, changed and wrought darkly by the most testing of the rituals of the Word.

As Henbane spoke the command that Midsummer day a mortal silence fell over the gathering, and the gaze of the novices was concentrated with a fearful intensity on the solitary shaft of light that even now moved on, half on the lake’s shore and half into its deepening edge where, pale green, the limestone shore shelved out and then was gone into the shimmering chill of the water.

The shaft’s brightness served only to make all the rest of the chamber seem dark, but for the massive dappling of the light’s reflections on the water that played back and forth across the Rock and would remain much the same for some hours yet until, its journey across the lake complete, it reached the face of the Rock itself and rose back whence it came, towards the darkness of the night. But by then many of the young eyes now hypnotised by the light would be drowned and dead, and see light no more. It is – or was – one of the great ironies of moledom that moles of the Word celebrate Midsummer during the day, whilst those of the Stone made their ritual when that day ended, and night returned. But for now... suffer the Word’s vile way....

Henbane remained elevated on that rocky outcrop on the far side of the chamber behind which a high cavern runs into which no sideem may go. There are the remains of previous Masters, their body shapes preserved in the slow encrustations which form as ceiling water drips and water trickles out of unseen tunnels and runs on to feed the great lake.

It was up one of those tunnels, tiny, dark, almost unexplored, that Mayweed had led Sleekit moleyears before, each carrying one of the pups Henbane had borne after her mating with Tryfan. Nameless then, Wharfe and Harebell later, they had been carried past the surface cemetery of the Masters and up into the darkness, their escape made the easier by the awe in which the sideem held that place, and the reluctance with which they followed Henbane’s command to pursue and kill.

Indeed, not a single one of the five sideem who had obeyed her command had returned, lost in the swilling darkness of the tunnels and perhaps taken by drowning into the dread Sinks into which failed sideem are sucked. For in Whern such tunnels are inclined to flood, and moles to drown. There, too, it was presumed, Mayweed, Sleekit, and the pups had been lost and now none but Henbane herself, hoping with a mother’s hope that those pups survived, believed them still alive.

More than once Henbane cast her gaze behind her towards that cavern and the distorted shapes of the Masters dead; her gaze settled on the newest corpse there: Rune’s, the father she killed. Already the surface of his body was slaked and hardened with shining crystals of lime, his black talons turned a milky white, his back sheening into the grotesque and arching form of a centuries-old Master behind him, his snout extending beyond its normal length and dribbling with the drips of that wet place. At his rear, past his distorted right paw, the biggest of the feeder tunnels stretched away to blackness, half blocked by his body. Water trickled out from it; water that might become a flood. Henbane shuddered and turned back to watch the rite commence.

Although at first the mass of moles might have seemed in no special order, in fact to one who knew them it was plain that near each Keeper those novices attached to him had gathered. Apart from Henbane herself, four moles stood out from the rest and these partly by virtue of having taken their places immediately under the spot where she had stanced: Terce, Clowder, Mallice and Lucerne.

Such was his chilling authority that Terce would have been noticeable at any time in any company, but there, that day, for this rite, this quality he had was especially marked.

His large thin body was so still that a mole looked twice to see if he was alive, to which the clues were only his open staring eyes and the just perceptible in and out of his breathing. A little below him, to his right, was Clowder, full grown now and dark, his gaze pitiless, his physical power overt and frightening; to Terce’s left flank was the mole many had looked forward to seeing – Mallice, his daughter. The likeness was unmistakable, for her body and head were thin and dark like her father’s, the eyes similar. Though smaller than both Terce and Clowder there was a quality to her eyes and set of her jaw that warned a mole not to cross her path, the more so that Midsummer day because like others there she was afraid, and fear made her beauteous face look vicious.

The last of this quartet was Lucerne, who had taken a place of special privilege behind and above Terce, and nearest of all to his mother Henbane. The most frightening thing about Lucerne was the fearlessness with which he seemed to face the coming rite. From his dark eyes there came a look of utter confidence overlain with tension and concentration. He did not look like a mole who could fail.

Taken together, these four presented a formidable front and from their position might almost have been taken for a protective guard about Henbane; or else a custodial guard, which many there knew was more the case.

Few truly believed that the Mistress was cured of the madness that had overtaken her earlier in June, and Whern was rife with rumours that these four moles, led by either Terce or Lucerne himself, had nurtured her back to sanity for this day’s rite, and that alone. After... nomole could know. She would have fulfilled her task. Lucerne would be legitimised by the rite and ready to take her place, leaving Terce, his tutor, the second most powerful mole in moledom. If Lucerne wished so to do, none there would gainsay him: the sideem would rather have a strong Master than a failing Mistress.

Other lesser rumours abounded too, of Mallice especially, and of how Lucerne and Clowder had used her – with her acquiescence – and even, darker still, how she and her own father, Terce... but few moles there dared stare at her for long. She seemed to sense when others gazed on her and turned her narrow eyes on them, and left a mole feeling marked for future vengeance if he displeased her. She had something of the power and allurement of Henbane, but none of her strange charm. But now... all that was as nothing before the reality of the rite to come.

“Begin!” Henbane had said, and as the echo of her solitary command died away in the high darkness of the Rock the First Keeper came forward.

He was an old, thin mole of withered mouth, but dignified, and he advanced into the water and turned to face the way he had come. As he did he signalled a novice forward and a male broke ranks and came to him. The Keeper began the low chant, in little more than a guttural whisper, which is the start of the ancient liturgy of anointing, his voice cold and strangely powerful in its whispering age, and finding awesome echoes in the distant Rock. Light seemed to thunder down about him as he spoke, and the black water of the lake stirred and lapped away with his movements into the darkest corners of the chamber.

“Forasmuch as all moles are conceived and born in shame and weakness, spawned of lust and born out of the flesh; forasmuch as born moles cannot please the Word until they have Atoned; forasmuch as allmole without instruction of the Word and mandate from it will die cursed in everlasting pain, and unfulfilled, the Word ordains that chosen moles go out into moledom’s bleak places to convert the lost and blind, to destroy the mindless and the wilful, to set example in word and deed and bring Atonement to those cursed.”

The First Keeper paused and stared about, his front paws dropping half submerged into the water. He stared down at the mole before him who crouched at the very edge of the lake, his snout low.

“By words and deeds!” the First Keeper cried out suddenly.

“Is it not so?” spoke Henbane sharply.

“It is so!” the Keeper whispered back.

“Forasmuch as this mole has been admitted to the knowledge of the Word,” continued the Keeper, the other novices now utterly transfixed and staring, “may he thank the Word for its complaisance and its pleasure and now be grateful to stand trial in the chill waters of the Word’s judgement. To be found worthy is to live; to be found wanting is to die and journey to the Sinks and there repent his failure in just and everlasting torment. Art thou grateful for this chance?”

“I am,” whispered the novice humbly.

“Art ready?”

“I am,” he said yet more softly, his flanks visibly trembling.

“Then prepare now to submit thy will, and the last vestiges of thy shame and vanity, to the Word’s power and might, here, today, now, before us thy witnesses.”

“I do!” said the novice.

The First Keeper now laid his paws on his pupil’s head, and Henbane spoke out the following words in a commanding voice: “Of those before us now, some, mighty Word, are unsure and weak, their desires false, their intentions misaligned from thy intent. May thy dark waters punish and damn them and we be witnesses to their shame.”

“May it be so,” said the eleven other Keepers.

“And more than so,” said Henbane.

This was the signal for the First Keeper to raise the mole before him and turn him to face the Mistress.

“The novice Brenden, born of Howke, I present to thee for ordination of the Word,” he said.

“Dost another make avowal for the novice Brenden, born of Howke?” said Henbane.

“I, Fourth Keeper, declare the same,” said that Keeper, coming forward.

“Novice Brenden, art thou ready to make the declaration of assent before the Rock and these witnesses?” said Henbane.

“I am,” replied the novice.

“By this rite thou shalt be sideem or die inglorious. The sideem are the only true representatives of the Word, privy to its secrets, privy to its power, privy to its purpose. They profess the faith in the scriptures uniquely revealed to the Master Scirpus even in this holy place and scrivened by him, whose creeds and articles must be proclaimed afresh by each generation.

“For this great task thou hast applied, for its training thou wast accepted by the First Keeper, and thou now find seconding by the Fourth. Your testing time has come. In the declaration thou art about to make, thou wilt affirm thy loyalty to the great inheritance of faith, of inspiration, and of guidance through the Master or the Mistress of the day.”

Henbane stopped speaking and a dread silence followed before, faltering at first and then gaining in confidence, the novice Brenden replied in the prescribed words.

“I, novice Brenden, borne of Howke, will so affirm and declare by belief and trust in the Word and the power of Atonement.”

Then Henbane spoke again.

“A sideem is called to lead and care for allmole towards the service of the Word, and to show the cursed the way of Atonement. It is his duty to watch over the spiritual health of those in his care, to reward virtue, and to punish without mercy and in the manner taught by the articles of the Word all those infected with error, or who lead others to error in their ways. He acknowledges the absolute power of the Master or the Mistress of the day and teaches others to do the same, that the sideem may be as one, and through their sage ruler follow only the true way.

“In order that we of the High Sideem may know your mind and purpose, and that those amongst your peers chosen to survive the rite may be witness to your declaration, you must now make the declarations I, your Mistress, put to you.

“Do you believe, so far as you know in your own heart, that the Word has called you to the office and work of the sideem?”

“I believe the Word has called me.”

“Do you accept the scrivened Word as revealing all things necessary for salvation of mole?”

“I do so believe.”

“Do you accept the doctrine of Atonement, that the original sin of mole may be eschewed and divorced only through austerity in the Word’s name?”

“Truly, I believe it.”

“Will you accept at all times the judgement of the Master or the Mistress of the day, and the discipline of the sideem?”

“Gratefully I so accept.”

“Will you be diligent in your study of the Word, in prayer, in discipline, in the upholding of truth against all error?”

“By the help of the Word, I shall.”

“Will you strive to shape your life even unto death, according to the Word?”

“Humbly, I shall.”

“Will you be witness of the Word and its true prosecutor at all times, always?”

“As I have been taught, so shall I be.”

“And now, before we ask novice Brenden to make the final declaration, let us speak thus for him: Holy Word, if it is your will he lives, give him the strength to perform all these things that he may complete that task he has begun in your name.”

“Be it so!” cried out the assembled Keepers and novices as one.

“Then let the Rock be witness to thy faith, let the waters of the lake cleanse thy body, and may the Word have mercy on thee if error lurks within thy heart.”