Duncton Found (104 page)

But Merrick was not just another senior guardmole or eldrene, nor even “just another” sideem. He had after all – though Wort had no reason to know it – been the first to survive at the Midsummer rite when Lucerne himself was anointed, and this had required a rather special desire to survive.

Unfortunately, since then he had been confined to more northerly systems and at the time Wort met him in Ashbourne he was feeling undervalued and rejected. In this meeting, therefore, between Wort and Merrick, the driving zeal of an eldrene met the thwarted ambition of a sideem, and initially the eldrene seemed to win.

But Merrick had been trained by the First Keeper of the Word very well, and knew that persistence would eventually find its reward. Though he thought Wort overzealous to a fault, and found the overt – almost physical – passion with which she had espoused the Word distasteful, yet he saw he might make it her weakness even as it appeared to be her strength. He had been dismayed by the eldrene’s patent disregard of his authority, thinking at first that it was an expression of her desire for power. But the more he studied the eldrene the more it seemed, incredible though it was, that her sole concern was to maintain her possession of this irritating mole, Beechen of Duncton.

Naturally sideem Merrick had heard of the Stone Mole and his reputation, but he dismissed it as an inevitable outcome of faulty oppression that such moles thrived in the backwaters and grubby places of moledom where followers eked out their lives.

His view was that the sooner such apostles and Stone-fools were disposed of the better, in spite of the Master’s orders. He had himself been instrumental in having several such moles quietly killed. The fact that this insolent eldrene had not harmed the Stone-fool suggested to him two possibilities: first that she was afraid to because the Master had instructed her not to; or second, and more sinister, she was herself infected by a desire for the Stone, and could not bring herself to kill the mole. Both were, of course, good reasons to encourage the eldrene to do so....

Even as Merrick weighed up these devious thoughts an idea, yet half conscious and half formed, came to him and he found himself saying, “Eldrene Wort, I am sure you are aware that one of the difficulties we have in administering Ashbourne and providing extra quarters is that the Master is planning strikes against followers. They have already started in the south, and guardmoles and others are coming north to be ready for the assault on evil Beechenhill.”

As Wort’s eyes lighted up at his use of the phrase “strikes against followers’ and then positively glowed at the mention of “evil” Beechenhill, he quickly added, “You probably know that it has been one of my long-standing ambitions to be the mole that is responsible for the final annihilation of that wretched system.”

He turned to the two senior guardmoles who had come to give him support in this curious confrontation, and nodded at them in such a way that they echoed his sentiments about Beechenhill with frowns and a general eagerness to rid moledom of the pestilence of the Stone.

Wort, who now looked as if tasty morsels of worms had been placed before her after a long fast, said, “The holy Word must indeed long for the destruction of Beechenhill, whose notoriety is known to us in the south and is something, I am forced to say, we do not understand. You cannot have will enough for this task! But sideem Merrick...” Merrick smiled and came closer, all friendliness now, all willingness to help.

“Eldrene?”

“These strikes you mention against followers. I had understood, indeed it is no disloyalty or betrayal to say I understood from the Master himself, that they would not be started quite yet....”

“No, no, eldrene Wort, they began in February, earlier than originally intended, and I understand they have been going on at an ever increasing pace.”

“Successfully?”

“Very. But naturally it is most frustrating that we here in Ashbourne have not been told positively that we can attack Beechenhill.”

This was a little misleading. Ashbourne had been told not to mount an attack until given the word, and it was reasonable to assume that this was because the Master wanted to oversee it himself.

“Of course, the Master will be well pleased when it is done,” he added, turning the talon in the wound of Wort’s over-weening ambition towards the Word.

Wort could not resist saying confidentially, “Sideem Merrick, I have good reason to think that the Master may soon be with us. He had a particular interest in the capture of the Stone Mole and instructed me to let him know when it had been effected, which I have done.”

“How glad he will be to know of it. And how I envy you that honour, Wort, indeed I do! If he is coming here – and clearly you have his ear in a way I could not hope to have – what pleasure it would be for him to arrive and find Beechenhill taken.”

“Taken and laid waste by the order and vengeance of the Word!”

“The Word triumphant at the Beechenhill Stone!”

“Oh yes,” said Wort, filled with sudden passion, “the blood of followers desecrating the Stone’s face, the blood of followers red upon the talon of the Word....”

“This Stone Mole....”

“Stone Mole?” said Wort immediately, and Merrick thought he had lost her again for her eyes narrowed as if she sensed a threat to her jurisdiction.

Merrick kept smiling and said, “Beechenhill would be a fitting place for the Word to end the life of such a mole. If he is the
Stone
Mole, what more fitting judgement than to desecrate the Stone with his life? If he is not, but merely a vile and evil imposter, then no punishment is too great for him, and the sooner the better.”

“Holy Word, our mother and our father,” cried out Wort suddenly, “guide us here in this hour of need and doubt, to find the way thou desirest us to go that we may go that way in thy name and no other.”

Merrick nodded in an agreeable kind of way at the end of this impassioned prayer and said, “But, eldrene Wort, such a course is not open to us, is it? No, no, tempting though it would be I cannot let my guardmoles loose on Beechenhill.”

“The Word shall guide you, sideem Merrick!” declared Wort with conviction. “You shall do what you must do and be guided by the Word.”

“Would that I had your confidence, Wort. Would that I always knew my way forward with the Word. Sometimes we are faced with problems that seem beyond the possibility of mole to resolve... but no matter. I shall not burden a mole who has barely ended such a long quest as you have. Another time.”

“We are put into moledom to help one another,” said Wort, warming to her new-found role of spiritual counsellor, especially to a sideem, “and if there is anything....”

“Yes, there
seems
to be a problem. Is it anything or is it merely a figment, like a nightmare that seems real at the time but afterwards is not, though the taste of horror remains?”

“Nightmare? Is it a matter of the Stone? My dear sideem Merrick, if it is advice you want....”

Merrick signalled to the two guardmoles to leave.

“No, no, Wort... you must forgive me if I seem awkward. There has been something much on my mind for these two days past. But....”

Wort stayed silent, Merrick affected to decide suddenly to tell what he had hoped to tell all along. He opened his mouth, he glanced over his shoulder, and he said, “I should not.”

“Sideem Merrick, is it a blasphemy you know of?”

“Worse.”

“
Worse
than a blasphemy?”

“Supposing, eldrene Wort, just supposing I told you I knew where another lived, what would you say?”

“I would say, ‘Does it matter?’ And if it did I would ask the name of this other.”

“To the Master it matters.”

The Master! A new way to serve him! The eldrene’s mouth moistened at the prospect of a satiation of her spiritual greed.

“Then I must ask, sideem Merrick, the name of this mole that matters to him.”

“The Mistress Henbane,” said Merrick quietly.

“Where?” said Wort with undisguised greed.

“Beechenhill.”

Wort greeted this with a kind of fomenting silence, her face twitching, her eyes hungry for more knowledge, her stance almost lusty with the pleasure of what she heard.

“Are you sure?”

“A mole I trust saw her fleeing into Beechenhill several days ago. He is sure it was her.”

“Henbane,” whispered Wort, her eyes narrowing and staring at a distant place where the name of the eldrene Wort of Fyfield seemed to be scrivened gloriously in stars across the night sky.

“She may escape. She may die. Nomole more accurst. Nomole more fitting for punishment,” said Merrick.

“But the Master, his mother. She cannot. Once he put out an order that she be taken. Now... The Master would rejoice to know she’s dead, the Master could not kill her if she is alive. Others...” Wort was almost incoherent in her musings on Henbane and what it might mean.

Then she said, as if in grip of herself once more, “Aye, others of confidence must do that deed. Sideem, I hear the holy Word, I hear it cry damnation on that apostate Mistress of the Word, I hear it cry vengeance on Beechenhill, I hear it cry death to the Stone Mole. These cries I hear as one, as one I hear them brutally assail me, demanding that I hear.”

“But I cannot help thee, Wort,” said Merrick, craftily. “I am restrained by my promise to the Master’s order. But thou with thy authority have been entrusted to act as you see fit. Pray this night for guidance, Wort, as I shall. Pray for us all! Pray for those brave moles of the Word whose lives are lost each day that the former Mistress lives and Beechenhill survives. Yield not to that temptation which the Stone Mole offers thee, to let him live. Be resolute, eldrene, for all of us, and pray for us and for thyself. Seek guidance this night!

“As sideem of this place I give thee full authority to use those tunnels that thou wilt, and demand that thou art resolute in the commands for action thou may in future give to thy worthy henchmoles. Though I cannot myself command my own guardmoles to follow thee I tell thee this: if they were to decide to follow a certain devout eldrene that I know, and her henchmoles, on a mission for the Word – as observers perhaps, as support, as moral sustenance – this sideem would not, could not, stop them! And if their destination was Beechenhill, why this sideem would rejoice. But it is for the Word to guide thee in such matters, not a mere mole like me.”

With that Merrick turned with a flourish and was gone, to leave Wort to face the most sleepless night of prayer and chastisement she had ever had.

Harebell’s return to Beechenhill with Henbane and the others had nearly turned into disaster on the very threshold of the system, a disaster only averted in a way that left the grike guardmoles who almost trapped them in no doubt that it was Henbane they had seen.

They had finally found a safe crossing over the River Dove, which was in spate due to thawing on the northern moors, and they were ambushed by a grike patrol on the other side. No doubt the grikes had guessed that moles might be forced to use that route and had simply lain in wait, though they could not have imagined that it was the former Mistress of the Word they were about to confront.

But there they were, four large guardmoles against two tired males, Harrow and Holm, and three females, two of them elderly: it was no contest, or should not have been.

“Well, well,” said the commander of the grikes with a cheerful smile, “patience is rewarded with a little group of faithful followers. Greetings... and
don’t
move.”

But Henbane did move, in an extraordinary display of authority which made all of them, none more than Harebell, understand how it could have been that this mole was once Mistress of the Word and ruler of all moledom.

“Mole,” she said, coming forward with dignity and complete confidence, “I like not your tone, your manner or your intent. Nor shall the Word. And by the Word you and your colleagues shall be accursed if you do not Atone for your insolence against my person and that of my companions.”

It was unfortunate that one of the grikes had seen her before, for there was no question that they would have retreated, so formidable was her manner and the threat she made.

As it was, one of them said, “By the Wor... it is the Mistress Henbane herself.”

“It is, mole, and you are fortunate you stopped yourself swearing by the Word. As thy Mistress I command thee all to stance back and let us pass.”

“But...” began the grike.

“Ssh!” one of those with him said in awe.

Quick-thinking Harebell said, “They should be made to Atone now!” and with that, and her snout in the air, passed on, leading her mother with her.

Harrow had to prod poor Holm in the rump to get him moving again, so terrified was he, but Sleekit, a formidable mole in her own right and well able to think calmly in such moments, made a fitting rearguard to the group, and even gave the patrol a withering stare as she passed. Each of them proceeded slowly up the slope, expecting the patrol to come chasing after them, but it did not and they reached the shelter of the tunnels above without further trouble. Once there Harebell was able to lose any pursuers in the complex limestone tunnels and they were soon picked up by an astonished and delighted watcher and taken on into the main system.