Duncton Found (51 page)

He saw her and he saw her kin in the system thereabouts, generations of her making, and his troubled face looked pleased. She saw him, and her peaceful eyes looked troubled.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked her.

“I can guess who you might be.”

“Can you guess why I might have come?”

“I can. How did you know?”

“He never forgot,” said the traveller. As the old female’s eyes lightened with pleasure, he asked softly, “Will you tell me?”

She stared at him, and when the youngsters who came near stopped to stare as well, she sent them away.

“Shall you ever speak of it?”

“It is part of moledom’s history and my own. I may speak of it, I may scribe of it: there is no promise I shall ever make I cannot keep.”

She was silent a long time, and for some of it she turned and gazed at the Five Clouds above.

At last she said, “I have never spoken of it. Why must I do so to you?”

“Look at me, mole, look well.”

She did, and she nodded and she sighed. Then she did

speak, and that stranger mole made a record of what she said.

I did not know his name. He was young, he was like nomole I had ever seen or ever saw again. The sky was in his fur so bright it was as if it had never been there before. I was afraid of him and asked him whither he was bound. When he made no reply I said, “Are you going to Beechenhill?” In those days that was a system outcasts and followers of the Stone sought out for refuge, and the Five Clouds and the Roaches beyond was a safer route than most. We often saw such vagrant moles pass through.

“Are you in trouble with the grikes?”

It was then he gave me the only dark look I ever saw upon his face. It made me cry. He asked me if I was of the Stone and I said I did not know what I was. I had gone there to escape such things. But if the Stone was like the Five Clouds then yes, I was of the Stone. And if the Word was of the Five Clouds, then the Word was for me. I was surprised that he asked me what they were and so I took him there. It was October, yet warm and he was male, and I was untouched by mole. Before he came I had felt so young and gay, but the moment he looked at me I felt I had waited for him all my life, and as if my life had been long. I took him upslope a little way to see the Five Clouds better than we could from here and when he saw them he said we must go to them. I said nomole should, and he said he was not ‘nomole’. He took me there, and beyond to the Roaches themselves where the scent of pine makes the rounded rocks and wormless soils seem light and heady. There above the Five Clouds where I thought I could never go, nor have ever been again, we mated. For a time he was everything to me. I never knew there could be such joy with anymole, nor have I ever known it since. His talons were both rough and soft, wild and free, his body strong. Yet sometimes he was like a pup in my paws and even said himself that if I’d been able I should have suckled him. It was but lovers’ talk. Sometimes he seemed but a pup....

I do not know how many days we wandered there. On the last day I pointed east and said, “Beechenhill’s there. Was that where you were going?” He said, “I know ’tis there. I know.” If he had not been so strong, so fierce at times, so assured unto himself, I would have said he was afraid. “Promise me you’ll never go there, never.” I did. I would have promised anything.

We wandered slowly back downslope to here where he left me and where you find me now. I knew he would not come back.

“What was his name?”

“I never asked his name,” she said, “not once. Nor did he ask mine. When we needed a name we took it from the earth or the air or the sky as we made love. He was most beautiful. He made my life.”

“Did he ever say where he had come from, or whither he was bound?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know who he was?”

“He chose not to tell and I not to ask. Why should I change that now?” She looked around and saw the youngsters born of her own youngsters’ young. They were curious and creeping near once more. She looked very old and yet her eyes were so filled with that short memory they seemed as young as those of the pups that ran to her.

“What’s he want?” asked one of them.

“To talk of the Five Clouds,” she said.

“Oh, them! When’s he leaving?”

“Don’t be so forward, don’t be so rude,” she said, laughing.

“He’s going now!” they said. “What did he want?”

She said nothing but watched the mole leave, dark, his fur shining with the sky, and long before he paused to look back and raise a paw and call farewells she had turned from the sight of him and followed the youngsters to play.

Such is the record that mole made, and it remains the only clue to where, that October long ago, when darkness was poised to fall across moledom’s pleasant land, Lucerne, Henbane’s son, might have been.

Lucerne came back to Cannock as secretly as he had left. Now he had been there, then he had been gone, now he was returned as Terce had said he would: full of the fire of crusade, impatient to begin.

“The sideem are all here, all waiting, all eager, Master,” said Terce, with Slighe in attendance. “The trinities are named; Clowder has returned and Ginnell arrived. All is ready.”

“All? Is Mallice here?”

“She is not, Master.”

“I am displeased.”

“But your... journey. You... were... satisfied?”

“Satisfied?”

“With where you have been.”

Lucerne looked at Terce in such a way that Terce never asked that question again. Nor, when she later heard of it, was Mallice ever fool enough to ask. Nor anymole. What was had been. What would be was what mattered now.

“Have Clowder and Ginnell reported?”

“Fully.”

“Good news?”

“Excellent.”

“It is well. You will brief me now before I see them. It will save time. Meanwhile, Slighe, let it be known that tomorrow, early, the whole chapter of sideem shall meet and then I shall make known the nature of the task the trinities will have. After I have spoken with Terce, and talked with Clowder and Ginnell, we three shall meet again and arrange which trinities will go where. It will be a long night, Terce.”

“But the beginning of a longer night for the followers of the Stone,” replied the Twelfth Keeper.

“You are nearer to the truth than you yet know!” said Lucerne, his eyes bright. “Now brief me.”

Of the full horrors and pitiless slaughter that Clowder was responsible for at Mallerstang in Ribblesdale we shall soon know more. It was the first of the new massacres in the name of the Word. Everymole, male or female, old and young, that Clowder and his guardmoles found in that quiet and peaceful place was killed in a rapine orgy of violence. The moles of Horton, judged pure of the Word, were nevertheless forced to see Clowder’s work for themselves, trekking up the bloody slopes of Mallerstang. Lest there be any doubt at all of what a mole’s duty was, the eldrene and the senior guardmoles of Horton were forced as well to snout some moles Clowder ordered to be kept alive for that purpose.

To this day the slopes of Mallerstang seem to hang heavy with that massacre, and in October, when autumn comes, then if the sun shines those desolate slopes seem red. “Aye, red with the blood of innocents,” as the locals say.

“It is well done,” said Lucerne. “We shall have Clowder tell the full story to the chapter of the sideem tomorrow. It will encourage them and make their duty clear. Mallerstang shall be an example for us all of how the Word made angry wreaks vengeance on the wicked and the sly.”

Early the next day Lucerne spoke to the full chapter of the sideem. There was a change among those who expectantly and eagerly waited for him to speak compared to those who had heard him in Whern at Midsummer after the ousting of Henbane. Now there was a harder and more certain air about them all: some had scars from travels they had made, some seemed older by far. But the most part of the difference was in the confidence and spirit they had. The weak ones had gone and those that were left, or the older sideem who had survived the testing times of interrogation, were resolute and self-disciplined.

Before Lucerne spoke, Terce told the moles about the trinities and Slighe assigned them to one and to a system, so that each knew with whom he would serve his task and where he must go, though none knew yet what the task might be.

There was mounting excitement and curiosity about this when Clowder rose and gave a cold, impartial account of the destruction of Mailerstang. He told how those moles had mocked the Word, and why its judgement had been merciless. Awed silence met the end of his account, and then such cries as a rabble makes when it feels victorious and its evils seem justified. Cries which ask for more and call for death on all those not on their side.

In this atmosphere of brimming violence and hatred, Lucerne at last rose up. Instant silence came. The speech he made was a long and passionate address, though in Terce’s record of it the full power of it is lost, and the passion diluted. But the record shows that all who heard it rejoiced to be so led, and to be given tasks of the Word that would lead inevitably to the destruction of the Stone.

As he spoke on, there came an adoration to the sideems’ faces, and when he smiled they laughed, and when he laughed some were moved to tears.

“Help him, Word!” they cried out.

“Blessed be our Master!”

“Your Master? Nor yet even Master of the Word. For I am not yet ordained. Nor shall I ever be... no, not ever be.” He paused and the silence was so great that if a mole had dared breathe it would have been heard.

“No, my fellow sideem, I am not ordained. And this pledge I give thee as I give it to the Word we serve and which makes us and gives us our life. When the task we begin this day is complete, on that night will I be ordained. By the whispered Word, by the bloodied Stone, by the drift of cloud, by the rasp of just talon; by the shout of triumph in thy hearts shall I be ordained. When that night comes, that dread night for those that fear the judgement of the Word, when that night is here – that night when rejoicing fills the heart of those who have no fear of what they do –
then
shall the Word judge me Master. But what night shall that be? What shall it be to us?”

“Tell us when, Master!” shouted a sideem.

“Master, tell us what we must do that you shall be ordained.”

“You must fulfil your tasks,” he said simply, his voice suddenly calm, his eyes watching for their response as he paused and wiped white spittle from the corner of his mouth.

“What is our task?” another said, his voice pleading with Lucerne to say.

“To go forth obediently in those trinities in which you have been placed. To go to those systems to which you are nominated.” He stared at them, playing with their terrible desire.

“But what shall we do?” one asked at last.

“Do that which is most hard. You shall... listen. Listen to the followers of the Stone. Listen for the deceit and fraud they call Silence. Listen and scriven the names, the places, the strengths, the weaknesses, the
everything
of the followers.”