Terce and Lucerne looked so astonished that Wort paused in her narrative and said, “You know those moles?”
“We have heard of Mayweed,” said Terce quietly. “And Sleekit is a former sideem, assistant to the Mistress Henbane. Well! This is indeed remarkable, Master-elect.”
“It is, Tutor-Keeper Terce. Continue, Wort.”
“After those two the one called Stone Mole arrived. There was pause before he came in, in which the excitement mounted even more and I confess I felt faint with heat and the blasphemy of being in such a place, and whispered prayers to the Word to protect me....
“But then he came. He came alone. Alone into that heaving, noisome, ghastly chamber...” She paused and her eyes stared behind Lucerne and Terce as if she saw again the sight she had seen then. What was most extraordinary about that pause, which was marked only by the matching pause in the scrivening talon of Slighe, was that Wort’s attitude towards Beechen was plainly ambivalent as if, recalling the moment, she could not even now decide whether to talk of what she saw with alarm, or awe.
The moment lasted long enough for the doubts arising from that ambivalence to be sown in any listening mole’s mind – and then her manner veered towards condemnation and hatred as she said with quiet intensity: “The Stone Mole is a young mole, male, handsome, healthy, and has eyes that a mole cannot easily look away from. He looked briefly about him, and as he did I knew him to be the mole I had seen as light before. Then he smiled, and his smile was that of innocence, and he spoke and his voice was soft to the ear. Oh, beware this mole, moles of the Word! Beware the words he speaks, the temptation he brings. Though I have said this to nomole, I fear the power that he holds! Aye, I fear! Evil is in his form, which is good and strong; evil is in his words, which are pleasant and reassuring. Evil is in his ideas, which dwell upon the unthinking mindlessness of a Silence to come. But most of all, evil is in his eyes, which draw a mole as do the gazes of a roaring owl, and blind him, and paralyse him, and lead him to his doom.
“This was the nature of the evil I saw then, this the allurement of a mole who enthralled all who heard him that night but me, guarded as I was by the Word’s wisdom and truth.
“But yet I witnessed power. Others will deny it, others will not tell you the truth, for they will fear it, or be seduced by it. But I saw it, and witnessed it and tell of it now. I said that chamber was hot and fetid before the mole Beechen came: yet the moment he entered it was cool and sweet-scented like the grass in June, and moles who had been restless and excited grew calm and easy. Evil! I said there were cripples there, and the diseased. I saw it, and witnessed it: they called him ‘Master’, and their Master spoke of the Stone. The beset went to him and were touched by him
and they were healed.
I saw a mole who could only move by dragging himself along aided by others healed by the touch of his Master’s paws. I saw that mole return to his place unaided. I saw a mole blind, his eyes rheumy with murrain, with his sight restored, the filth plucked from his eyes by the talons of that mole. And I saw an idiot mole whose words were an incessant jumble of filth made whole again, and able to speak plain. Evil. All of it evil and vile.
“But a greater trial for this servant of the Word was yet to come. I will not – I cannot – properly describe the course of that night, except to say that the healings were interspersed with prayers and incantations to the Stone of an ancient pagan kind. Sometimes the mole Beechen spoke them, sometimes moles present uttered them, crying them out, most frightening to see.
“But it was when the mole Beechen asked that moles touch each other in love that my trial came. I did not feel the Word desired that I join in such a rite and, accordingly, pretended to touch the mole at my side on the flank, though I touched him not.
“Even at the moment of my pretence the Stone Mole cried out as if in pain and said, ‘Which mole among you touches me not?’ And then again, ‘Which mole among you loves me not? He who touches another with his heart touches me!’ Then for the third time when I did not touch a mole he cried, ‘I tell you there is one among you who despises me, and who touches me not. The Stone will know her, the Stone will come before her and the Stone shall forgive her, for at the moment of my passing she shall cry out to me as I cry to her now, and she shall touch me when all others fear to. Her name will be reviled but she shall be forgiven. I have known her already and shall know her again. So may it be for all moles who fight against the Stone, that in the end they shall be forgiven!’”
Her voice had changed as she spoke Beechen’s words, or supposed words, becoming soft and chanting as her face adopted a curiously beatific and gentle expression which only succeeded in highlighting its essential inflexible poverty of spirit.
Then her manner changed violently as she denounced, in a rage the more shocking for the calm that had preceded it, all she reported Beechen as having said.
“Evil, Vile evil! The abyss was before me and I felt the urge to leap forward into its dark depths. I, devout mole of the Word, servant of thee, Master. Strike me! Talon me! Hurt me! For I felt then the temptation to cry aloud, to touch, to know this false Silence of which the Stone followers speak. Even I felt it!” Her voice, which had started the denunciation in loud anger declined now to a whisper of abject horror as if she felt herself corrupt, and almost corrupting.
But then Wort’s innate self-righteousness emerged once more, and an officious smug look came over her face, quickly masked, though not entirely successfully, by a sickening modesty.
“But I did not yield. The talons of the Word were about me, and they did comfort and guard me. The moment of temptation passed and I was left stronger and fiercer in my support of the Word and recognition of the subtle and surreptitious nature of the Stone and the mole who is its representative in moledom. I saw he was a mole whose beauty masked a seductive horror greater than moles of the Word yet know. I witnessed it twice more, once in Fyfield where this Beechen took the meeting away from your sideem Heanor, and again outside my own system at Cumnor.
“Master, as I stance here before you, I would have killed him there and then with my own talons... and I thought of doing so. But the Word chided me and said ‘Are you to take the law of the Word in your own paws? Are you to judge the punishment? This must be the work of the Master alone. He shall decide. Tell him what you have seen, and he shall judge and he punish.’ So seemed the Word to speak to me and this is what I have come to say to you.”
For a long time after she had finished Lucerne continued to stare at her, utterly still. No testimony ever brought before him had ever been so stark or clear, nor its warning more plain.
Then Terce came to Lucerne and whispered to him, and Lucerne nodded, looked at Wort, and nodded again.
“Master-elect,” said Wort, seeing this, “if I have done wrong then punish me. I did all that I did in the name of the Word.”
“I know it, mole. Now tell me, what is thy Master to thee?”
“The source of all truth about the Word.”
“Would you lie to your Master?”
“May the Word strike me into eternal suffering if it should be so.”
“Then answer me this question, eldrene Wort, and answer it truthfully, for if you do not eternal suffering may be yours sooner than you think.”
“Master-elect?”
“What do you know of the deaths of Heanor and those in his trinity?”
Wort seemed surprised at the question, less for its implications as for its unimportance.
“I killed them myself, in the name of the Word. They had abused the Word.”
“And Wyre?”
“Not him, he died naturally. But the eldrene Smock I killed.”
Lucerne smiled cruelly.
“Then, mole, you have robbed us of both a trinity and the eldrene of Fyfield.”
“It was just, Master-elect, you would have done it yourself had you been there.”
“Drule, Slighe...” said Lucerne coldly, “take the eldrene Wort outside, watch over her, and await my summons to come back here.”
Wort’s eyes widened in dismay as she saw the dreadful Drule and Slighe bear down on her, but she said nothing when they led her away.
“Well?” said Lucerne.
“A dangerous mole,” said Terce.
“Not one I would want to share a burrow with,” said Clowder.
“Well!” declared Mallice, admiration in her voice.
“I was impressed by her,” said Lucerne. “We have either to punish her for a succession of blasphemies and abuses of power which few moles can have ever exceeded, or we give her a task to suit her many abilities. I favour the latter.”
“You have a task in mind?” asked Clowder.
“Several. She has that quality even a lot of sideem lack: an ability to think for herself and do something about it.”
“It is a pity she takes herself so seriously,” said Clowder.
“Is it? I think not – it may be the very quality we need if such a mole is to fulfil the function which I think the Word intended for her. She is a mole of formidable resource and courage, and she is as loyal to the Word as anymole we are likely to find. We need moles we know can keep a secret, moles strong enough to report only to us.”
“But she has no experience wider than the one she recounted, and nor is she sideem.”
“A mole does not have to be sideem to be useful to the Word, and to ourselves. There is something absolute in the faith this mole has and in the rightness of what she sees and does that I like, and which I think will strike fear and respect into the hearts of all those under her.
“But most of all I like the darkness of her mind, the secrecy in which she prefers to live and work. I have no doubt she does not reveal to her right paw what her left is doing without pondering it first. But she needs others to watch over her, just to be sure she does not decide
you
have blasphemed, Terce,
or you,
Clowder! Let alone myself, of course! Let’s get her and the others back in here.”
When they came in, Wort looking somewhat subdued for she thought she was to be punished, Lucerne said to Drule and Slighe, “Range yourselves by this mole Wort! Aye, so!”
The three moles stared about uncomfortably. Drule glowered, Slighe blinked, Wort looked uncertain of herself.
Lucerne smiled benignly.
“You have been too long confined in Cannock, Drule.”
“Master?”
“And you as well, Slighe.”
“But I am here to serve
you
Master-elect.”
“Quite so. As for you, eldrene Wort, words fail to express the admiration I feel for you. You shall continue to be known as the eldrene Wort of Cumnor though Fyfield shall now be yours to command as well, and the moles within it. But in truth you shall be something more than that, for you shall work for the good of the Word with Drule and Slighe as your comrades in crusade. Aye... no need to protest, Drule, you will do it very well and it will not be for too long. Nor you, Slighe, more action and less scrivening will do your talons good. Yes, you shall all have a very special task, which must be done by moles I trust always to tell me the truth, whatever they may tell other moles.”
“What shall be our task, Master-elect?” asked Wort, immediately taking charge of this gruesome trio.
“To investigate ways and means of seeing that Beechen of Duncton is punished of the Word, and finally made dead with such dishonour that it will cast a pall of shame forever over the faith of which he is supposed to be the greatest son. How you will do it I cannot tell, and you shall report back on that. Meanwhile together, and with those moles you shall now have at your command, eldrene Wort, you shall make a strike that we need and have long debated.”
“What strike?” asked Wort.
“Explain to her, Slighe, now, so we are all agreed what it is we are talking about.”
Wort listened intently to Slighe’s succinct account of the debate that had overtaken the tunnels and conclaves of Cannock in the moleweeks past.
“I see,” she said at the end. “I see. Yes.”
“Yes?” said Lucerne.
“Oh yes, Master-elect, I understand. Moledom needs to see the
power
of the Word and be impressed by its great might. What may be obvious to moles like us may not be so to those less thinking or devout. We must begin to curl the talons of the Word about the Stone Mole in readiness for the Word’s just vengeance.”
“Yes?” encouraged Lucerne. He liked this mole’s mind.
“Then we must destroy where the Stone Mole first thrived. As the Holy Burrows were laid waste so must we lay waste Duncton Wood. The place is already feared and outcast, and followers and moles of the Word alike regard it as diseased. We shall purge moledom of it, and the moles who still struggle to live there.”
“But Tryfan shall not be touched. If he be alive I shall deal with him myself. And I stress we shall not punish the Stone Mole with death, yet,” said Lucerne. “Cut off from his home system, driven from the peripheral tunnels and burrows that give him succour, we shall let him wander pathetically across moledom, growing ever more isolated and weak. It would be most fitting – would it not? – if Duncton Wood were destroyed on Longest Night, for that is the night I shall be ordained Master of the Word.”
“But that leaves us little time,” began Slighe.
“’Tis a long way to travel by then
and
organise,” said Drule.
“The Word shall guide your talons as it guides mine!” said Wort fervently. “Blessed be the Word!”
“Blest be,” whispered Lucerne.
“Master-elect, I would have liked to witness your ordination on Longest Night,” said Slighe, reluctant to set off quite as soon as the irrepressible Wort.
“My dear Slighe, you shall. I shall be ordained on Longest Night in the blood of the moles you choose to destroy by Duncton’s Stone. Let our time of rejoicing be as a blasphemy to them, let the Word be so well pleased with us that we can outface the hallowed Stone in its name, in the very place that spawned the Stone Mole. And if the Word
has
spared my father, why, what pleasure for me, what an honour for him, to see his son ordained.” Lucerne laughed at his irony and said acidly, “It shall be the last thing he sees.”