Duncton Rising (75 page)

“My, but you’re a hard, cruel mole, Keeper Sturne!” she had cried at him. “Your words wither a mole’s heart, and I care nothing for your discretion. If I can’t raise my voice for a mole as good and true and loyal as Library Aide Pumpkin then what is the liberty that our ancestors fought for in this very wood a century ago? Damn your smugness! Drubbins had more good in him, more kindness, than you can even begin to think about!”

When she had gone Sturne muttered to himself, “Like mother, like son! Aye, the Stone spoke to me through her. There may be a way, there may be a way...”

Hopeful for the first time in days he had gone back to the Library, his mind racing with ideas.

“‘Your words wither a mole’s heart’ she said,” he muttered to himself. “Well, so they may do, so they can do. There’s a way, but where’s the text to be found? Eh? And how...?”

He had scribed the missive for Cluniac to find, disguising his paw as best he could to preserve his cover. Then he had searched through such texts on ancient liturgy as the Inquisitors had allowed to be preserved in the Library and found even as dusk deepened the brief passage he wanted.

It was in an obscure and rarely used part of the Library, near the tunnels of the Ancient System itself He heard the roar of alien wind-sound and knew the weather to be worsening. The Ancient System was angry, its Dark Sound rising, its mood threatening.

“Like mine!” said Sturne aloud, finally taking down the text he had sought. “Oh yes, like mine! And here it is, here’s what I need.”

He opened the text wider, ran his right paw over it and turned a page, and he peered long and hard, kenning as quickly as he could.

“Yes...” he whispered fiercely, “oh yes... the ancient liturgy of Exorcism. Ha! This will make them fear the wrath of the Stone. This will make them show the whites of their eyes!”

Sturne sounded positively cheerful for a moment – until he started kenning the text aloud, and his voice carried up into the dim reaches of the deep-delved heights of the chamber above him, and down the dark forgotten ways of the tunnels that led into the Ancient System itself. He sounded savage and cruel.

“Vengeful Stone,” he kenned, “the evil Snake of possession entwines this mole’s heart! Thrust thy talon fiercely into it, wound it, and rip it out from its nest! Aye...”

Sturne paused, blinked and frowned and speaking in a very different voice said, “Of course, there may be more than one of them. I must remember to say “These moles” rather than “This mole” if that is the case. Now where had I got to...?”

Then he continued as before, except that his voice was louder, and he even raised a paw in declamatory style to help himself along. “Fasten thy wrath upon this evil spirit that mocks thy good, and destroys thy harmony! Seek its nestlings where they creep and crawl, rot them, break them, make their skin peel and their eyes bulge and their – Humph!” exclaimed Sturne, interrupting himself again, “this is just a little extreme: I’m sure there was something more... more coldly savage. That’s what I want. Ah! Aaah! Yessss... the terrifying liturgy of Commination, which expresses the Stone’s anger against sinners. This’ll make their talons drop off and their snouts droop!”

He had found what he wanted, and the sibilant hiss of his final and gratified “yessss...!” wound away and grew fat and horrid in the dark tunnels about him as he kenned in silence the Commination he would use that very night.

“This very night! Here and now! Yes, yes, I must try to remember,” Sturne muttered to himself as, repeating the words he had learnt for what felt like the thousandth time, he saw the moles come out of the wood and cross the Pastures, straight towards where he lay.

“Oh Pumpkin,” he whispered as a yellow gaze caught the limping, wan form of his friend between the guards as he was brought to meet his end. To be killed, to be hurled in here among these reeds, to be left to rot, forgotten in this Stone-forsaken place – except that it was not Stone-forsaken. Sturne was there, nervous no more, his just anger mounting, the words he had learnt needing no more rehearsal, for they were ready now, ready and waiting for these murderous foul-minded moles of an evil sect.

Sturne watched, angry but in complete possession of himself, waiting for the right moment. He glanced briefly beyond them to the wood’s edge and could only hope that Cluniac would be ready and waiting there. He knew he himself could not be seen, for being a disciplined and thorough mole he had stanced roughly where he expected the Newborns to come and stared towards the reeds where he now crouched. He had watched, he had seen how the •shadows looked all the more dark and impenetrable for the ever-changing lights of the roaring owl way east of them, and he had worked out precisely what to do. He had guessed that they would not kill Pumpkin until they reached the edge of the reeds – otherwise they would have had to carry his body across the Pasture. Yes, yes, that was what they would do, wait until they were right up to the very edge.

Yet it took nerve to wait, since he could see them more and more clearly and they appeared to be looking straight at him. He could only stare, be still, and prepare himself. Timing was of the essence. Too early, and they would have time to recover themselves, and his bluff might be called, and he and Pumpkin both lost. Too late, and Pumpkin might have suffered the fatal blow. He presumed that that was how they killed moles – a few swift blows to the head and snout, and...

“Wait here!” He heard the familiar and unwelcome voice of Brother Barre. “I’ll find a good spot.” Barre approached yet nearer, splashing about, swearing, peering at the ground, until, a little to Sturne’s left, he declared, “This’ll do. Bring him here.”

The voice was a growl, almost dispassionate. Sturne watched as the two guardmoles, who now seemed huge beside Pumpkin, almost carried him to where Barre stanced impatiently.

“Come on, come on, we have other sinners to chastise tonight! And females to enjoy!”

The cold about the Marsh was bitter, the dark deep, the lights of the roaring owls sinister and strange; Sturne, so near to the real sinners of the night he could almost touch them, felt ice in his heart. “Other sinners to chastise tonight” Barre had said, and “females to enjoy”. Aye, tonight was the night of rapine, bloody talons, tonight...

“Are you going to bother with the intercession, sir,” said one of the guards,” or shall we just do it?”

“Oh-Stone-we-commend-to-thy-everlasting-mercy-our-most-miserable-miscreant-Pumpkin,” said Barre, the words spoken so quickly and meaninglessly that they melded into each other. “Now do it!”

“May the Shtone forgive you!” cried out Pumpkin.

“Fuck forgiveness!” said the other guard, and with one violent movement he and his colleague grabbed Pumpkin, raised him off his paws and upended him snout first into the murky black ooze at their paws before Sturne could guess what they were doing.

Not a taloning, but a drowning in mud: silent, but for the victim’s desperate splashing, and cruel. Everymole’s nightmare.

There was a distant roar behind them across the Marsh, and the yellow gaze of a roaring owl swept its slow way round, nearer and nearer to where they stanced, and Sturne knew the moment had come; now or never.

As the gaze of light shone finally from directly behind him he rose out of the reeds and in a deep and powerful voice, with one paw raised as he pointed his talons at Barre, he began the terrible liturgy of the Commination, the ancient statement made by Holy Moles which expresses the Stone’s anger and judgement against extreme sinners who have gone beyond normal redemption;
“Brethren, seeing that here stance three moles that are accursed in that they do err and go astray from the commandments of the Stone, let the talons of thy spirit stab them; let the talons of thy mind pierce them; let the talons of thy wrathful love destroy them!

“It is a fearful thing to witness such wickedness as these cursed moles, and in particular this Brother Inquisitor Barre, do practise here, and now, before us. Aye, brethren, fearful though it is yet we must pierce and stab and destroy the Snakes of evil that entwine them, and have made them internally foul and beyond the forgiveness of living mole...”

His voice was a most fearful thing indeed, and stanced above them (as he seemed) and speaking out of the darkness of the Marsh and the light of the gazes of the roaring owls, a mole might have thought that he was the voice of many brethren gathered and advancing there. To add to the effect he trod his paws ominously into the plashy ooze about him so that it sounded as if many moles were advancing.

Certainly the two Newborn guards seemed to think so, for they let go of Pumpkin, who rose out of the mud and water spluttering and gasping, and fell back on to drier land, leaving Barre alone. He, it must be said, was not as immediately impressed by Sturne as his minions in murder, but mention of his name by this mole that seemed (and sounded) more than ordinary mole shook him. Then as Sturne’s words of the Commination continued like some rapidly advancing storm of thunder and lightning across the sky, Barre too fell back.

It helped that the night was bitter and increasingly turbulent and that rushes of wind rattled and shook the reeds, making the black form of Sturne seem all the more substantial.

“Thou art accursed in the Stone for that the Snakes are in thy bodies, feeding upon thy pride, thy spiritual sloth, thy indulgence and unpurged by any true faith, or love, or charity. Therefore...”

And by now Sturne was a terrifying sight, the very image of the Stone’s wrath, so that Pumpkin, now nearest him, was himself terrified, staring up at his friend and not recognizing him at all. Indeed, he had never much liked the Marsh End, though he had always dismissed stories of the fell spirits and dark phantoms that lurked thereabout as mere fancy. But not any more, never again, definitely not!

Sturne advanced upon the mute and transfixed Pumpkin and putting one paw about his shoulders turned him to face his would-be murderers, while with the other he thrust his talon towards the three hapless Newborns, and Barre in particular.

“This good Brother Pumpkin is forgiven his sins, but you are cursed in yours. Be gone! Be gone lest the wrath of the Stone visit you here and now in this place made accursed by your own pride and blasphemies. Be...”

Sturne was about to utter a third, and, he hoped, last “Be gone’, but was thinking that if they did not go they might very soon guess who he was, and what he was about. The two guards seemed very ready indeed to be gone, and were looking fearfully at each other and at Barre as if to encourage the Brother Inquisitor to give them permission to flee.

But even as Sturne uttered the word “Be...” he sensed that something more than declamation was now needed, and he wished he knew what it was. Perhaps he sent an intercessionary prayer to the Stone on his own behalf, perhaps Pumpkin did the same; however it was, the fillip that was needed to turn Barre’s irresolution into outright fear and panicky flight came just when it was needed.

For suddenly there came from behind the Newborns, and not far behind, a most piercing and terrifying scream, so that Sturne’s “Be gone” was, as it were, emphasized as if by some power greater even than the terrifying thing he himself had become.

The scream was loud, potent, deep, and infinitely sinister – and it was one that the resourceful young Cluniac had often utilized to good effect against his siblings on a dark night.

“No!” cried one of the guardmoles, and it was the only word all three of them said: “No!”

And they were off along the Pasture, away from the Accusing Brother of the Marsh, and to avoid the fearful thing that shrieked and screamed from out of the Wood itself; away, away as fast as their paws could carry them, and none faster, none more afraid, none more stumblingly, terrifyingly panic-stricken than Brother Barre himself

Meanwhile, nearly murdered, now frightened out of his wits, Pumpkin felt inclined to sag down into the wet ground, and cover his eyes and ears with his paws.

“Pumpkin!” cried out Sturne, still thoroughly carried away by the role he was playing, and the power of a liturgy he had half invented. “Flee now to the wood!”

“Er...
there?”
panted Pumpkin, still not recognizing Sturne, but not wishing to go rushing off to where unearthly screams came from.

“Here!” called out Cluniac. “Quick!”

“I mean...” muttered Pumpkin, confused, afraid, shocked, and wondering what else could happen that night.

But Sturne was in charge and knew what he must do.

“Be gone!” he said, now sounding like some avuncular Holy Mole speaking to an errant Brother at fabled Uffington.

“Well...” said Pumpkin, at last beginning to move.

“Come
on!”
shouted Cluniac. The sudden scream having worked, Cluniac now wanted to get away as soon as possible.

Pumpkin did manage to take a few steps back on to the Pasture, but he paused yet again, and turning, said, “But whatmole are you?”

A roaring owl gaze swept their way; Sturne turned a little into it, his face bearing an uncharacteristic smile. 1 am your friend, your good friend. Now be gone, lest Cluniac comes forth and discovers who I am.”