The Gift of Dark Hollow

by Kieran Larwood

  It was everything he feared.

  The temple, a place of peace, beauty and quiet worship, had been hacked apart like the doorway outside. Tapestries and statues lay slashed and ruined on the floor all around. Cruel, spiky runes had been painted everywhere in something that looked like blood.

  At the far end of the temple, where the altar should stand, a rabbit had been chained to the wall, her robes ripped and bloodied, her fur matted all over with half-healed wounds. Her ears were tattered and torn, her head hanging down, body limp.

  But in front of her was the worst thing. A lump of metal, just like the ones Podkin had seen before. Cold black iron – all lumps and spikes. It seemed to pulse with an evil power: greed, hatred, anger, or a soupy mix of all three. You could feel it seething, could smell burning iron in the back of your nose, an acid taste on your tongue.

  As the rabbits entered the room, the thing twitched in response. It juddered and moved, sliding like an uncoiling snake. Waves of power spread out from it. It made Crom stagger sideways. Yarrow and Mash both gasped, and Zarza almost fell to the floor, retching and spitting.

  Podkin couldn’t help giving a little squeak of fear. The thing was calling out, sending a silent alarm to its Gorm slaves. It wasn’t fair – they hadn’t even had time to see if the priestess was still alive! Was there some way to stop it before it was too late? He slapped at the brooch, waved his dagger: neither was any good. What about Paz’s sickle?

  He turned to his sister. She was staring at the pillar, almost hypnotised. ‘Paz!’ he hissed and shook her shoulder. She came back to herself and looked down at him, dazed.

  ‘The sickle!’ Podkin said, pulling at her belt. ‘Stop that thing from calling out!’

  Paz quickly realised what her brother was saying. She pulled Ailfew from her belt and held it up. There were no plants here beneath the earth, but they were growing above, on the surface of the warren. Podkin watched her close her eyes and call to them, summoning them down to help.

  Almost instantly, cracks began to appear in the earthen roof of the temple. Powdery soil rained down on them as roots began to push through from above. Tiny, pale tendrils at first, which thickened in the blink of an eye. They drooped down in loops and spirals, clumping together as they fell, until a whole section of ceiling gave way and a clump of twining greenery crashed on to the pillar itself.

  The stuff began coiling around the metal, and Podkin could feel the toxic force of the thing dim to a dull murmur. He could see it shuddering and writhing, trying to get away from the roots that were wrapping it. The plant tendrils were reacting too, shrivelling and wilting wherever they came into contact with the iron, but there were always more, spilling down through the roof in a torrent as Paz kept calling them, her eyes tight shut and Ailfew held high.

  Zarza gasped in relief next to him, and Crom shook his head to clear it.

  Then on the temple wall, the priestess jolted awake, sucking in air like a drowning rabbit pulled from a lake.

  ‘She’s alive!’ Podkin shouted, and ran up to her, Yarrow close behind him. The chained rabbit blinked down at them, struggling against the iron shackles around her wrists and ankles.

  Up close, Podkin could see just how bad a state she was in. Her skin hung loose from her bones, cuts and welts covered her fur. One eye was swollen shut, and the other was already flecked with rusted blood. The Gorm pillar had been changing her, turning her into its slave. If they had gotten here even a day later …

  ‘Where …? Who …?’ she muttered, squinting at the room around her.

  ‘Are you Comfrey?’ Podkin asked. ‘Comfrey the priestess?’

  ‘Comfrey …’ the chained rabbit whispered the name, trying to remember if it was hers. Finally she nodded, blinking away tears.

  ‘We were sent here by Sorrel,’ said Podkin, talking as quickly as he could. Paz might not be able to battle the living metal for long, and it would surely call the Gorm down on them when it was free. ‘He told us about Surestrike. We need it to fight the Gorm.’

  Comfrey’s eye opened wide at Sorrel’s name, but when she heard about the hammer she shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Surestrike has to stay safe.’

  ‘But you must tell us,’ Podkin pleaded. ‘We’ve risked everything to get here. Surestrike is our only chance …’

  Comfrey shook her head again, looking away from the little rabbit. She would rather die, he realised, than give away the sacred hammer. It was brave of her, but frustrating. How could he convince her to give up her secret?

  ‘Priestess.’ Yarrow spoke from behind Podkin’s shoulder. ‘Look across the room. We have one of the Twelve Gifts with us. Surely that is a sign from the Goddess that we can be trusted?’

  ‘We have more than one,’ said Podkin. It was too late to care if Yarrow or Zarza saw now. ‘Here is Starclaw, the dagger of Munbury warren. And here is Moonfyre, the brooch of Dark Hollow.’

  He held both up for Comfrey to see, and when she did, fresh tears began to spill from her eyes. Her broken mouth spread in a smile and Podkin thought he heard her whisper the words ‘blessed be’.

  ‘Will you tell us?’ he asked. ‘Quickly, before the Gorm come?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I will. Leave the warren and head south. A hundred paces along the lakeshore, there’s a cairn of rocks. Reach inside and grasp the lever. Turn it half to the right, a quarter to the left and push. The bridge will appear.’

  ‘And where is the hammer?’ Podkin asked.

  ‘In a tomb on the island. It will only open for one of the Gifts, but you have three.’ Comfrey smiled to herself. ‘You have three …’

  At that moment shouts could be heard from the warren tunnels, beyond the temple door. Had the pillar managed to call its servants, or had they found the old rabbit? It didn’t matter. They had to get out. Now.

  Podkin looked round at Zarza and Crom to see what to do. They were both at the doorway, braced for combat should the Gorm come crashing through.

  ‘Behind me,’ Comfrey hissed, gasping out words against the pain of her wounds. ‘There’s a passage out …’

  Yarrow quickly moved to the wall, pushing and tapping it with his fingers. Pook, peering out from his hood, started calling out: ‘Bapple! Bapple!’

  ‘There!’ said Podkin, realising what his little brother meant. ‘Press the carved apple on that pillar, Yarrow!’

  The altar wall was covered in carvings, most of them smashed, but one solitary apple remained untouched. Yarrow slapped at it, and something clunked in the wall behind. A section of wood fell away to reveal a tunnel leading up and out.

  ‘This way!’ he called to Crom, Mash and Zarza, and then remembered the trapped priestess. He lifted Starclaw and tried to cut through the chain on her leg. The blade bounced off without even leaving a scratch. ‘Iron chains!’ Podkin wailed. ‘I can’t cut through!’

  ‘No time,’ whispered Comfrey. ‘You must go. Go.’

  Her eye closed as she whispered the last word. Looking behind him, Podkin could see Paz collapsing to the temple floor. The battle with the pillar had been too much for her, and now the thing was burning through the vines that covered it, yelling out for help in waves of invisible force.

  ‘Go, Podkin, go!’

  Yarrow yelled at him, and pushed him up the tunnel. He saw Crom, jamming his spear through the temple doors to block them, and Zarza lifting Paz in her arms, and then the bard was behind him, forcing him up and out, away from Applecross and into the open night.

  ‘Comfrey!’ Podkin managed to shout – and then she was gone, his friends bundled behind him, free of the warren, the trapdoor slamming shut and the priestess sealed inside.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ancients’ Island

  Outside, the night was calm and still. The round full moon hung heavy in the sky, looking down at a twin version of itself reflected in the black glass of the lake below. Neither of them knew, or cared, that a rabbit was being tortured and transformed somewhere beneath the ground, or that a
horde of Gorm soldiers could be about to burst from the earth in a murderous rage at any minute. They just carried on, quietly shining, the same way they had done for millions of years.

  Podkin and the others blinked at each other, their eyes adjusting to the switch between lamp and moonlight.

  After a few heartbeats, Podkin said, ‘How long will it take them to find us?’

  Crom put his ear to the warren mound, listening with his keen senses.

  ‘They aren’t in the temple yet. It’ll take them a minute or two to get to the door. A couple more to break the spear, and then they have to find the doorway. We’ve got ten minutes, perhaps?’

  ‘Then what are we standing here for?’ Paz shouted. ‘Come on! We have to get across the bridge!’

  *

  They ran for the lakeshore and then headed south, making for the jumbled heap of rocks that was the island, visible only as a darker patch of shadow out on the lake.

  As they ran, Podkin wondered about that iron pillar in the temple. It had called the Gorm in the warren, but could it reach further afield? Could it speak to other warrens, other servants – to Scramashank himself? And just how intelligent was it? What if it could tell them exactly who had been at Applecross, and what they had been carrying?

  There could be hordes of the enemy galloping out to catch them right now.

  All these thoughts tumbled through his head, and at the same time he was listening for sounds of pursuit behind them. The clanking armour of Gorm riders on their terrible giant rats, or the wail of their hunting horns.

  One paw in front of the other, Podkin. His father’s voice sounded in his head, as it always did in times of trouble. He tried to concentrate on running, eyes on the island, but it just didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

  Beside him, Paz was casting nervous glances over her shoulder. Zarza was lost up ahead somewhere: just another flitting shadow in the night. Crom was sprinting, holding one of Mash’s ears for guidance, and Yarrow was running as fast as he could with Pook clinging to him. The little rabbit was staring behind him at Pod and Paz, digging his pudgy fingers into the bard’s neck in fright.

  ‘If you could just … allow me to breathe … a little … my dear chap,’ he heard the bard pant.

  He was beginning to wonder if they would even reach the bridge, let alone open it, when a voice called out of the darkness.

  ‘Here! I have found the cairn!’

  They followed the shout, and found Zarza standing by a stack of granite rocks, half buried in moss and hummocks of grass. Moonlight sparkled on the tiny flecks of quartz all over the stones, and Podkin thought he could make out the lines of weathered carvings, all but worn away by time.

  Paz sprinted up and started running her paws over the rocks. ‘Where is the lever? I can’t see a lever anywhere!’

  ‘There’s no lever here,’ confirmed Zarza. ‘Just old stones.’

  ‘Look for a hole,’ suggested Crom.

  ‘Or a secret panel,’ added Yarrow. ‘There’s always a secret panel in the stories.’

  Paz began making her way round the rock pile, frantically peering into every nook and cranny. Mash joined her. In the darkness behind them, noises could be heard. Slamming doors and voices, Podkin thought. They’re coming.

  ‘Put Pook on the rocks,’ he said to Yarrow. The bard gave him a strange look. ‘He’s good at finding things,’ Podkin explained. ‘Quickly. There isn’t much time.’

  Yarrow shrugged Pook from his neck and placed him on top of the cairn. With Paz and Mash scurrying around the outside, it looked like they were all playing some bizarre game of Hide-and-Seek, or King of the Warren.

  As Podkin suspected, it only took Pook a few seconds to find a crack in the rocks that the others had missed. He popped a chunky arm inside and shouted, ‘’Ole! ’Ole!’

  Podkin jumped up and, pulling Pook’s arm free, slipped his own inside. It was a shallow hole, half full of cold slimy water, but there was the definite shape of a handle inside. Hard and icy, it felt like metal of some kind, and it clanked as Podkin closed his fingers around it.

  ‘I’ve got the handle!’ he shouted. ‘How do I turn it again?’

  ‘Half right, half left, wasn’t it?’ Mash said.

  ‘No, quarter right, half left,’ corrected Crom.

  ‘Faster!’ Paz shouted. ‘They’re coming out of the warren!’

  Podkin couldn’t see behind him, but he could hear raised voices and something that sounded like the clanking of armour. He wished someone would hurry up and tell him how to turn the stupid handle.

  ‘Half right, quarter left,’ said Yarrow. ‘And then push.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Podkin asked.

  ‘Of course I’m sure! I’m a bard – I can recall everything in crystal-clear detail. It’s all stored away in my memory warren.’

  ‘Your memory what?’

  ‘Warren, Podkin. An imaginary construction in my mind that lets me store things away in the form of everyday items. On the mantelpiece in the longburrow is a box for vital information. There’s a little glass apple inside it containing the instructions for the lever: half right, quarter left and push.’

  ‘Stop wittering!’ Crom hissed. ‘Podkin, choose a combination and do it! They’ll be on to us any minute …’

  Podkin looked at the others. Nobody looked certain except Yarrow, who was staring at him with such intensity, he couldn’t be wrong. Could he?

  Goddess help us, Podkin thought, and turned the handle half right and quarter left. It moved with a squeal of metal, grudgingly at first but then easing up. He finished with a push of his paw, and the thing slid down into the slimy pool with a clunk.

  Nothing happened.

  Turning round to look at the warren, Podkin could see a group of rabbits spilling out from the entrance, all holding lit torches. They were beginning to split up, searching the ground for tracks. It would only be a matter of minutes before they found the trampled grass that would lead them straight to the cairn.

  ‘Well?’ Paz was looking out at the lake. ‘Where’s the bridge?’

  ‘It must have been the wrong combination,’ said Podkin.

  ‘Then try again!’

  Podkin shrugged at his sister. ‘I can’t. The handle went down into the stone.’

  ‘So much for your imaginary warren and glass fairy apple,’ Crom snapped at Yarrow.

  ‘Have faith, Captain Grumpy,’ Yarrow replied, calm and collected. ‘Clarion himself gifted me with my memory. You will see.’

  Even as he spoke, something began to rumble underneath their feet. A juddering that spread out into the lake, causing ripples to break its perfect surface.

  ‘Look at the water!’ Mash cried, and they all jumped down from the cairn and ran to the lakeside.

  Something was moving, coming up from the riverbed. A clanking, grinding something, pushing water out of its way as it rose, stretching from the shore to the island.

  ‘It’s the bridge,’ said Podkin. ‘You were right, Yarrow.’

  The bard nodded in a way that said but of course, not taking his eyes from what was happening in the water. Probably storing that away in his memory warren too, Podkin thought, ready for a tale or a song in the future.

  The little rabbit also watched as the bridge rose, one slab at a time, each piece clunking into place to form a chain of stepping stones.

  ‘The Applecross rabbits were very clever to make this,’ he said. Zarza was already jumping on to the first stone, the others close behind.

  ‘No rabbit made this bridge,’ said Yarrow. He paused to run his fingers over one stone slab, still wet from the lake and streaked with mud and weed. ‘This is something from the Ancients. Before rabbits ever walked this world.’

  ‘Who cares who made it?’ said Crom. ‘Let’s get across it. Now!’

  Podkin took the blind rabbit’s hand to guide him, Yarrow scooped up Pook, and then they were hopping, slipping and leaping away from the shore and the Gorm behind them.

  *
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  It was like jumping across the stones in the Red River, back at Munbury, when he and Paz used to spend their summers playing out in the fields and woods. Except they had never gone across the river at night, and there hadn’t been any murderous, armour-clad monsters trying to kill them.

  Hop, hop, hop. The stone was cold and wet beneath Podkin’s paws, and more than once he slipped or skidded on some wet silt. The others were all sliding about as well. If one of them went in, there would be a splash loud enough to draw their pursuers’ attention, if the clanking bridge hadn’t done so already.

  Zarza reached the shore first, leaping gracefully on to the island and turning with a dart in hand, ready to cover the others to safety. Crom clambered up next, cursing under his breath, and poor Podkin, who had been leading him, rubbed his arm where the big rabbit had nearly wrenched it out of its socket.

  Paz skipped over the last few stones, and they all gave Yarrow a hand up, Pook hidden in the folds of his cloak again.

  ‘I think they’ve seen the bridge,’ Zarza said, when they were all gathered together again. She pointed back to shore, and Podkin could see two of the spiky Gorm silhouettes. They were facing the lake, and one was beckoning to another, somewhere off in the darkness.

  Then the quiet night was broken with an explosion of caws and shrieks and something went flapping and clanking up into the night sky.

  ‘Gorm crows,’ said Paz, remembering the ones she had seen before. ‘They’ve sent for help.’

  ‘They have crows?’ Yarrow asked.

  ‘If you can call them that,’ said Paz. ‘They’re evil metal things. Just like the Gorm themselves. They use them to spy and send messages.’

  ‘Can you shoot them down?’ Crom asked Mash. The little rabbit had his blowpipe to his lips, but he shook his head.

  ‘Too far away. I can’t even see how many there are. Three at least, I think.’

  ‘So there will be more Gorm on the way,’ said Crom. ‘We have to find the hammer quickly, and get off this island before we’re trapped here.’