Urchin sprang down, Needle rolled, and the three of them gathered in the light of Juniper’s candle. “So what are you trying to do?” he asked.
“Everything’s falling into place,” said Juniper, and though his voice was quick with excitement, his face in the candle glow was perfectly calm. “The only way to prove that Husk is dead is to find his body, and let anyone see it who wants to.”
There was a gasp from Needle, who put a paw to her mouth. Urchin closed his eyes and wished with all his heart that this wasn’t happening. It wasn’t the time, or the place, to tell Juniper what he and Crispin had seen at dawn, but Juniper had to be told. He couldn’t continue weaving his way underground looking for a body that wasn’t there.
“It’s so simple,” Juniper went on, and lowered his voice. “It’s the prophecy.” He didn’t even glance at Needle, but Urchin understood. She didn’t know Juniper’s secret, and it wasn’t the time and place to tell her.
“Needle,” he said, “could you just check for any shaky ground or anything?”
Boys! thought Needle in disgust. What do they want to talk about behind my back? But she was too proud to argue, and scurried away to investigate.
“‘The fatherless will find a father…’” said Juniper in an excited whisper. “I’m the fatherless.”
“‘and the hills will fall into earth,'” said Urchin. “They did! But the dead paw…”
“It’s not enough to know who my father is,” said Juniper. “I have to find him. I think that’s it. I don’t understand this thing about pathways on the sea, but I’ve worked out the other thing, too. Mistmantle’s greatest enemy.”
“Yes, but, Juniper, wait,” said Urchin. He glanced to see where Needle was, drew Juniper as far away as possible, and whispered, “You think you can find his body, and I might have thought so, too, but this morning”—he barely spoke the words—“I saw him!”
“You think you saw him,” said Juniper, and looked as if he would have said more, but Needle had run out of corners to pretend to inspect and was coming to join them. “Just take my word for it, Urchin,” he whispered quickly. “You didn’t see him. I can’t explain now, but…found anything, Needle?”
“Of course not,” said Needle. “Now, if you think we have to go looking for a body, I suppose we should get on with it.”
“We all have to recognize the island’s greatest enemy for ourselves,” said Juniper. “You know it, Urchin. You met it on Whitewings, when you stood before King Silverbirch.”
“I met it long before that,” said Urchin, thinking of the night when he had followed Captain Husk through dark tunnels.
“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Needle, remembering a trap she had fallen into.
“And we have to face it and not let it win,” said Urchin. “I think you’re right. We have to find Husk, if he really is still there.”
“I was talking to Lugg on the way down,” said Juniper. “Between unblocking doors in the search for Catkin and removing wooden barriers for pit props, none of these places are as thoroughly sealed as they were. He’ll have to seal them again soon, so if we’re going to find Husk’s body, this might be the only chance. And this is when it has to be done, because some of those animals really do believe that he’s back.”
“But you’ve no idea where to look!” protested Needle.
“I think I’ve worked it out,” said Juniper. “We need to be directly underneath the Chamber of Candles, and we know it’s very deep. Twigg used this as a storeroom, and he said there was a blocked door down here and probably another one behind it. And we need to go more or less southeast. Some doors have been partly dismantled and some might be decaying, but I expect we’ll still have to do some digging and scrabbling to get through.”
“You’d never have done it by yourself!” said Urchin. “Why didn’t you ask us in the first place?”
“Couldn’t, could I?” said Juniper, and Urchin decided it had been a silly question. Juniper couldn’t have asked anyone to join him in something like this.
“We’d better get on with it, then,” said Needle briskly, “before the king sends anyone looking for us.”
“This way,” said Juniper.
They followed the candlelight to the right. There, in a recess, was a wooden door that looked completely solid. Juniper tried the handle, found it firmly locked, and gave it a determined shove with his shoulder. It creaked, but didn’t open.
“This is the door Twigg told me about,” he said. “It’s not blocked, we just don’t have a key.”
“A sword might help,” said Urchin. He stepped back and looked the door up and down. He’d learned to use his sword for fencing and useful things like cutting down ivy and fishing lost cloaks from the sea, but he wasn’t sure if it would be any use for this. He tried wedging it between the planks, but they were too firmly in place to be prized apart.
“Couldn’t we find something to batter it with?” he suggested.
“In a carpenter’s store?” said Needle. “There must be some tools or—oh, there was an ax upstairs. It was an old rusty one, but…”
Urchin scrambled back up the rough steps into the old workshop and returned to the top of the steps carrying the ax in one paw and dragging something like a flagpole in the other. It looked as if it might come in use.
“Look out!” he called, and threw the pole down the stairs. He leaped down after it with the ax in his paw. “If the ax is no good, we can take a run at it and batter it down.”
They took turns swinging the ax against the door and found that Juniper, who, having grown up among otters, was a strong swimmer and an excellent stone-skimmer, had a powerful swing. When he had splintered the wood enough to weaken it, they lined up along the flagpole, with Urchin at the front and Needle at the back, and charged.
The impact jarred Urchin’s sore shoulders horribly and threw Needle backward. “Just as well I was at the back,” she muttered, picking herself up. Urchin gritted his teeth and rubbed his shoulder.
“That door’s giving way,” he said. “One more.”
Under another blow, the wood wrenched and tore. A few more ax blows from Juniper made a hole big enough for them to throw the tools through first and scramble in after them. Needle’s spines and Juniper’s satchel caught on the splintered edges, but with a lot of tugging and a paw from Urchin, they had broken through into complete darkness. Apart from the draft from the broken door, they could feel no air currents at all. It was a shut-in place.
“We’ve made a terrible mess of that door,” remarked Needle.
“I don’t suppose anyone will mind,” said Urchin. “That wasn’t too difficult.”
As soon as he had said it, he realized that it was going to get a lot harder. Things always did. Juniper was holding the candle high, turning slowly, and Needle was licking a deep scratch on the back of her paw.
“We’re in another chamber,” said Juniper. “Earth walls. I’d hoped it would be a tunnel or a stair.”
“Let’s have a good look,” said Urchin. “It was too much to hope we’d only have to get through one door. But that last one was only locked, not sealed, so it could have been used not long ago. And as it leads to this chamber, somebody could have been here recently, too. The moles might already have started work on a way through.”
They shone the light around the chamber. Urchin drew his sword, ran the point around the walls, and nearly overbalanced when it suddenly slipped into a soft patch of earth.
“That’s it!” he said.
“There are scuff marks on the ground,” said Needle, peering at the earth. “Mole prints. Lugg and his teams might have been here. This must be one of those doors that’s been partly unblocked already.”
“Stand back,” said Urchin. “Juniper, you’re best with the ax.” After some chopping, barging, and scrabbling they had made a hole big enough to squeeze through with Juniper going first, carrying the candle, Urchin following with one paw on his sword hilt, and Needle close behind, peering over Urchin
’s shoulder. Juniper stopped suddenly.
“What have you found?” whispered Needle.
“Nothing,” he said, reaching with his free paw into his satchel. “I’m putting down a leaf. Try not to get it stuck to your paws, it has to stay where it is.”
“Laying a trail,” said Urchin, “so we can find our way back.” Needle was about to say that she thought Juniper was supposed to know where he was going, but decided that it wouldn’t help. Still, it was just as well she was here to take care of Urchin if he had to go running after Juniper on some silly dangerous quest that would probably get them nowhere. And when the king might need them, too. How were they to answer to Crispin?
The path twisted and turned so much that Needle soon lost all sense of where they were. Juniper paused now and again to put down a leaf, once stopping so suddenly that Needle, who was trying to work out where they were, walked into Urchin’s back.
“Sorry!” she said. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” She sniffed the air. “There’s a branch of this tunnel going off to the right.”
“I know,” said Juniper. “There are lots of them. But this is the right way.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I can tell,” said Juniper. He was paying absolute attention to every signal in the walls, the drafts, and the changes from cool to cold. He listened, too, to the drawing of his own heart that compelled him to the place and, at the same time, made him afraid of what he would find.
“Don’t worry,” said Urchin. “He understands things that the rest of us don’t.”
Squirrels! thought Needle. Sometimes, they were more trouble than they were worth. But now Juniper was holding the candle high and saying something about steps.
“A spiral stair,” he said, shuffling to one side. “Stay close.”
Even by staying as close to him as possible, it was hard for Urchin and Needle to see the candle as Juniper turned and turned with the curling of the stair which seemed to go on forever. How far had they been doing this, and how far down were they? The cold and damp of the air was enough to tell that they were far, far underground.
It must stop somewhere, thought Needle, plodding on down the stairs. Adventures can get really boring sometimes. Then she realized that Urchin had stopped, the light had stopped, and they stood together on a landing with a dead end before them. Juniper held the candle high.
“It’s another blocked entrance,” he said. Needle’s heart sank. “If you look carefully, you can see the outline of the doorway. There may still be a wooden door behind it when we break through.”
“Let me through,” said Needle. If they had to break through yet another sealed entrance, she may as well find out how difficult this one would be. She raised her nose to the earth wall. “I can smell wood somewhere,” she said, and pulled a face. “And decay. Definitely a smell of decay.”
Urchin sniffed at it, and that smell of decay carried such terrible memories that he found he was shuddering. It was as if this was the door to the greatest fear of his past, and he could feel again the raw terror of running through corridors of darkness with unseen things scurrying about him, cobwebs catching on his face, nameless things under his paws, Husk, the smell of evil, death, and decay….
“Urchin, are you all right?” asked Juniper.
He nodded. Brother Fir had cleansed that terrible dungeon and had made it a place of blessing. But the place they were looking for now, the bottom of the pit where Husk’s body lay, was deeper and darker than anywhere he had ever been.
“I know what you think,” said Juniper. “But I don’t sense evil on the other side of this. Only sorrow.”
“Are you sure this is the way?” asked Needle.
“Oh yes,” said Juniper. “We have to get through that door.”
Knowing that they were getting good at this, they threw all their energies into hacking, stabbing, and scrabbling the earth away. This wall seemed far thicker than the others, and they worked on with loose earth falling into their fur and ears, irritating their eyes, and blackening their paws. Urchin longed to give himself a good shake, but as he couldn’t do that without spraying more soil over the others, it was better not to think about it, just as it was better not to think of what lay on the other side of this. Perhaps Juniper was wrong, and after all this they’d find themselves in the wrong place.
It took a lot of hard work and grazed paws. The earth wall was so deep that when at last they had made a hole big enough for all three of them to crawl into, they were still not through to the other side.
“But it’s thinner,” said Needle. “Take care, we don’t want this lot to fall on top of us.”
“We should dig out the next bit one at a time,” said Urchin. “Two of us can watch the one who’s digging and get them out if it looks as if anything might cave in.”
There was no point in asking who would go first. Juniper scrabbled furiously until he had to stop to rub the thick layer of soil from his paw, and Needle said, “Here, let me have a go.”
“Yes, get your breath back, Juniper,” said Urchin.
Needle clambered into the hole. Juniper had reached a long way.
“We’re nearly through to the wood,” she called back, her voice so muffled by the surrounding earth that they strained to hear her. “There might be a soft bit somewhere. I think—yes—I think I’ve—oh! Ow!”
There was a scuffle, a sound of falling stones, and a scream. Urchin and Juniper crammed themselves into the space, but the scream had already died away.
“Needle!” they yelled. By the light of the outstretched candle they could see something that looked like broken steps and a rocky slope that disappeared into blackness.
“Needle!” they yelled again.
A faint whimper of pain came from somewhere far below. Juniper lunged forward, but Urchin held him back.
“Steady,” he said, putting his sword back into its sheath. “Whatever’s happened to Needle, we don’t want it happening to you too.” He called out again. “Needle! Can you hear me?”
A faint voice reached them. It seemed to come from impossibly far below them, and he had to twitch his ears and strain his hearing.
“It’s rocky…and very steep…a cliff…don’t fall…ouch!” gasped Needle.
“I’m coming, Needle,” he said. “Juniper, shall I take the light?”
With Urchin holding the candle, they crept forward. There were a few broken steps, then Urchin jerked backward. His paws tingled. The drop beneath was a sheer cliff. At its foot was a ledge, then two more steps, and a rough slope cluttered with broken stone, too long for him to see where it ended.
Urchin was used to running down walls. At the tower, he did it all the time. But he wasn’t used to coming upon them as suddenly as this, threatening to catch him by surprise and break his neck. He put out a paw to warn Juniper.
“It’s a vicious drop,” he said. “We could jump it, but I think it’s safer to run. Shall I go first?”
He handed the light to Juniper and leaned over the edge. “We’re on our way, Needle!” he called, and twisted to look over his shoulder at Juniper. “I’ll get as far as the ledge and wait there for you. It should be easy after that.” Then he tipped himself over the cliff and ran, slipping and scrabbling.
Juniper tried to breathe deeply, remembering at last to open his heart to the Heart and receive the strength he needed. Some time, far in the past, before all his other memories, there had been darkness, Husk, a scream, and a cliff. Now, in this terrible place with darkness behind and before him, he was coming to the end of this particular journey. There was still this plunge into the unknown before he could complete it. He had to do this, before he could start on the next stage of his life.
Urchin was waiting for him, Needle was injured, and there was no time to think. He tipped himself over the edge.
The smoothness of the rock took his breath away. There was nothing to grip, nothing to balance on. He was slithering, faster, falling on the ledge, rolling onto the s
lope—and Urchin had caught him. Side by side they dashed over the slope, dislodging pebbles, stumbling and scrabbling on loose scree, twisting and somersaulting to get their balance.
“Look out, Needle!” yelled Urchin as pebbles slipped from under his paws and left him sprawling on his back. The candle fell from his paw and went out. “Curl up!”
“I am curled up!” came a cross, muffled voice. She sounded like herself now.
Urchin reached the bottom of the slope and dusted himself down while he became accustomed to the cold and darkness. “Where are you?” he called.
“Here,” said a voice to his left, and if he strained his eyes he could see a ball of prickles. He knelt beside her.
“Are you badly hurt, Needle?” he asked.
Juniper was scrabbling in his satchel for flints and more candles. He struck a spark and placed a light beside Urchin and Needle, holding another in his paw.
Urchin began to take in where he was. The air felt empty, as if nobody who left this place would ever return. The far-remembered smell of decay and fustiness hung about, and he was glad he couldn’t see much. It had the coldness of a place that had never been lived in and never known sunlight.
“Can you stand up?” he asked Needle.
Taking his paw in her left forepaw, she pulled herself up. When he tried to take her right forepaw, she flinched away.
“I’ve done something to that paw,” she said, and held it to the circle of light from the candle. “I heard something crack.”
The paw had already swollen from elbow to wrist. “Can you wiggle your claws?” asked Urchin.
“Not much,” she said.
“Juniper’s got his satchel,” he said. “He should be able to bind it for you.” He turned to see where Juniper had gone and saw him walking away from them into the deeper darkness, with one small candle in his paws.
Juniper walked on into unknown shadows, cold and sorrow, and the end of his journey. It was not fear that filled this place, or a sense of danger, but a sadness heavier than anything he had ever known. Old white bones littered the ground. This was a place of grief and desolation.
The Heir of Mistmantle Page 18