Passing through the glittering corridor, they caught sight of a frantic fox, frightened of losing his place of privilege, taking bodies of the dead and building a wall in front of his house, clearly hoping the bleeding barricade would keep the flood waters of the cleansing at bay.
Roe came to a sudden halt as they caught up with the mother and her pups.
“We don't have time, Roe,” Scarlett said, trying to pull him away.
“No, I'm going to save this family now,” he responded with a stiff shove, planting himself in front of the short train of pups.
“Get out of the way!” the mother yelled, her eyes tossing within her head wildly. “We must hurry or we will miss the cleansing. We must be close. My son...you see...he was born a Shadow Fox. The cleansing will bring him fully into the Light!”
Roe forced himself in front of the vixen and would not let her pass.
“Get out of the way, I said!” she growled, baring her teeth, intoxicated by the hope ahead and drawn by the power of the Light.
“Listen to me,” Roe said in a calm deep rumble, not noticing how similar to Samson he was beginning to sound. “Go to the surface and get on a boat. Take the Thames until you leave the Greater Burrow of London. Do you understand? Save yourself and save your children. There is nothing but death here.”
She stopped trying to pass as he spoke, and started to relax and listen and the from the shimmer in his eyes she knew he was telling the truth.
“I will,” she said, “I don't know what came over me. The urge to head to the palace was overwhelming.”
Roe and Scarlett left her nuzzling her children and turning back towards the secret entrance to Sunniva's Womb.
“How did you do that?” Scarlett asked, running beside him.
“There is something wrong with them, Scarlett. Gremian has initiated something, something which has already begun to affect the Light and all the foxes in the Burrow. I simply broke through whatever it was.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Of what?”
“That the cleansing isn't going to bring a renewal of the Light.” Her face was beginning to glow and a faint smile began to crack her face.
“I don't know...I feel...and I know that the traitor's blood will bring something. Something other than the Light. Stop, Scarlett. We've been out of the Burrow so you have been unaffected. Look at me.”
He pulled her away from the draw of the crowd pooling around them.
“It is beginning to affect you,” he said, sniffing her cheek lightly. “Know this Scarlett. Traitor's blood will bring about the cleansing but it is another's blood that will give birth to the Light anew.”
“What blood?” she asked
And it came to him in a flash, how he was meant to save the Burrow, to save all those he cared for and to absolve himself of the death of Mayda, of his parents and all those who sacrificed themselves for his sake. Able had been removed from the Burrow in face and in name, he thought. The inscription, 'A traitor's blood to cleanse and...to renew'. The space in the inscription had been filled by 'Able' but removed along with all other mention of him in the distant past.
“Mine, Scarlett.” Roe, said resolutely, “To renew with the blood of Able, with my blood.”
He turned from her, and ran as quickly as possible, out of the glory of Sunniva's Womb and into the dingy Paw Maul, packed snout to tail with foxes, and littered with the trampled and discarded.
He couldn't help. The ripple of faith running through them was too strong. Scarlett, her head now clear, followed close behind and together they jumped onto the crowd and ran deftly over the writhing red rug, unnoticed by the foxes beneath them.
*
“Do you feel the pull?” Samson asked Ursula, over the light crackle of the fire. He rose and gazed out the burrow window. Ursula's Island lay peacefully before him bathed in the bluish glow of moon and stars.
“Gremian has completed the font of Light,” she responded. “The cleansing has begun.”
They both slowly came to their paws, intent upon meeting their end within the Burrow where they had been born and raised.
“We must keep our heads,” Ursula said, pouring tea out of a kettle that had been hanging in the hearth. “This is an old brew. My father passed the recipe to me. He predicted I would need it within my lifetime. It should keep the intoxication of the Light at bay.”
Samson drank deeply and watched his wife do the same, then set his mug down gently on the central table.
“We should find Roe and Scarlett drawn to the same place.” Samson said, attaching a dull old sword to his side. “The end has its little mercies. We will all die together.”
She looked at her husband and felt all the years that had been taken from them.
“There is one last mission I imagine you will want to complete,” she began, crossing to the mantle, opening the hinged length of wood at its top with a squeak.
“There is,” he responded with a sigh.
“You'll be needing this, then,” she said, dipping her snout in the trough and pulling out something long and wrapped in white.
“I have always kept it safe in the hopes it would find its home again.”
With a whip she whisked the fabric off, revealing a simple sword of bronze and steel.
“The sword of Synnove ,” he said, with a smile. “My family's sword.”
With a shrug and a smile, she threw the sword into the air, and Samson rose to meet it, bringing the blade to a secure home between his jaws.
“It feels good, even between these old teeth,” he said when he landed, testing a precise lunge and slice.
“This has been a good home these many years,” Ursula said, taking a final sip of her tea and gently placing the mug in its usual spot on the counter. “I did what I said I would, seeing the generations of my children. But it was always a home away from home. For all the exiled Foxes of the Light, the Burrow will always be our true home and I feel the need that it should be our final resting place.”
Bursting from the mound in the ground, they ran towards the banks of the Thames, the inevitable bushy form of the Beast leaping after them.
As they left Ursula's Island, a line of feral foxes watched them float away from the shoreline, and a young Shadow Fox dove into the water and followed.
*
Ten minutes later Edward was seated at the dining table in the rectory Gwen watching him, the steaming hot savoury pie untouched between them.
“Gwen, there is something I need to tell you...”
“Edward, with all that's been going on in the garden, and the contractor delays, and now this feral pack of foxes getting in the church, it's not surprising that you are a bit stressed and are imagining things as a result.”
Edward smiled at her, and she had to admit to herself that as crazy as his story of talking foxes sounded, he didn't seem particularly hysterical. In fact, she couldn't remember a time that he seemed more focused, happy, and sure of himself. The sincerity with which his story was delivered made it all the more worrying.
“Have a bit of my cottage pie,” she said serving him a healthy dollop on the warmed plate in front of him. “You haven't eaten all day, I'm sure, and this weather has probably given you a bit of a chill. What you need is something hardy. I indulged a bit tonight and put extra cheese on top.”
“Gwen. Most of the time miracles are obscure or metaphorical, but once in a while they are as plain as day and make up for years of ambiguity. I know it sounds crazy, but it is true.”
“Oh, Edward,” she said, placing her hand on his forehead while gently rubbing his shoulders. “What are you telling me. That the foxes we see on the streets of London have a city below us and that they can speak?”
“Not all of them. Only those born within the confines of London. Ferals tend to wander in, but they can't speak. They can't think beyond their instincts. We don't notice the foxes from the Greater Burrow of London usually, because they go to so much effort to avoid us.”
“Right before me, Gwen, so many miracles. You are one of them, too.”
She stopped rubbing his shoulders and could feel the tip of her tongue sticking dryly against the top of her mouth.
“This has been going on long enough, and I'm sorry I've been so evasive.”
Turning to face her now stiff and nervous face, he stood and gently helped her take his seat.
“Gwen. I love you and it would be an even greater miracle than talking foxes if you would be my wife.”
An age seemed to pass as a slow tear trickled down the avenues of her cheek. Finally, she laughed, and the fact that her fiancé may well be insane seemed of little import.
“Edward, it has always been on our own time and if you are ready, so am I.”
“Wonderful,” he said, giving her a hug and lifting her off the floor. “And just so you know that I'm not completely off my head, I will show you the secret of the church. Follow me.”
“Edward, you don't need to show anything to me. Crazy or not, I am for you,” she said, following him into the crypt, worried that he was building up to a moment of confusion and embarrassment.
Damp and uncomfortable, the crypt was a place she entered only if it was absolutely necessary. Weaving around the remnants of the carpenter's labours, he brought her to the feet of the sarcophagus with it's sleeping medieval iconography.
“See a fox, hand in hand with a person,” Edward said, pointing excitedly. “Haven't you noticed the fox motifs every where in this building?”
“Of course I have, Edward, but it is nothing more than a design element. All churches have interesting animals, or gargoyles, or little demons and many other creatures. The builders liked foxes. That's all.”
“Well, that's what I assumed when I first came here, but Reverend Haggerty showed me something more.”
Picking up the crowbar, he held it carelessly in front of her and when he raised it above his head, she momentarily thought he was going to skewer her with it. She let out a scream, and jumped when he planted it in a gap in the stones on the floor and prised one of them loose.
Her fear was quickly replaced by wonder as the stairway below was revealed to her.
“What is this? I didn't know there was another crypt,” she said, staring into the dark curl.
“I couldn't tell anyone, Gwen, I made a oath. But I can tell my wife...or my fiancé. You deserve to know. Follow me.”
He grabbed the same oil lamp, lit it and started descending the stairway in front of her.
Growing warmer as they descended, the air was also filled with a light that was much brighter than it had been before.
“Something is different,” Edward said, descending the steps in threes.
Gwen caught up with him at the bottom and shielded her eyes from the hot white light simmering on the surface of the font water.
“This is incredible, Edward. It is so beautiful,” she said, clutching his shoulder as both of them came to sit on the bottom-most stair. “How is it making such a glorious light?”
“I don't know,” he responded, as they both ducked under a crackling arch of electric light. “It has never been like this before.”
Suddenly, Edward's vision blurred the image before him, losing its form then coalescing into another. The central rotunda, foxes everywhere, lying and staggering and crawling over one another for a closer position to the fountain and its sphere. He had fallen asleep and had been dreaming. Or had it been a vision? Gwen shifted slightly beside him and with her movement somehow he knew she was still in the same dream. Somehow he had connected with her and they had been allowed to live the night of their capture as if it had been uninterrupted. He felt a tingle on the skin of his head. The energy of the orb was effecting him as well.
He coughed, his head throbbing and let out a groan as he tried to sit up straight.
“Hey, Hantsa. Edward, isn't it?” the fox called Daegal wheezed above him. “Whatever that explosion was, it has knocked loose the spike to which your chain is attached.”
Edward, chin pressed to his chest, didn't respond. He desperately wanted to return to his dream and closed his eyes trying to find his way back.
“You can do something...if you can break free. You can help. That is your duty isn't it?”
Edward looked up finally, then across to Gwen, a heavy steel collar around her neck and another chain nailed firmly to the fountain. It was then he felt something he had rarely felt before. An uncontrollable rage.
He leaned against his bonds with what little strength he had left and slowly felt the metal spike begin to pull free.
*
he Hantsa with a beard was called Tim, and he had worked as a safety officer for the London Underground for twenty years. Although the explosion still left him rattled, as well as the train wreck, he ignored the medic's request to look him over. His first priority was to make sure all the customers from the train were safe and that no one else was trapped from the collapse.
Already all public transport in the United Kingdom had been suspended, and all the planes grounded out of fear of an attack against the country. Media were kept at bay due to the danger in the tunnel, but there were many engineers and rescue workers on the scene to help with the careful search for survivors.
He found himself near to where he had regained consciousness after the blast, probably further than he should have been from the others, but he wanted to check under an exposed portion of beam.
Using a torch, hovering it near his temple, he tried to see as far back as possible into the narrow void. He was surprised to see a slight movement just in front of him. Reaching in, he felt fur and immediately recoiled, thinking it was a crushed and dying rat. When he retrieved his hand, however, there were long red hairs stuck to it.
“Must be a cat,” he said to himself. “The same type of tabby as Molly. I probably shouldn't.”
He was on the verge of turning and leaving, when he suddenly changed his mind, spun around and reached back into the dusty gap.
“You'd better not be diseased,” he said, feeling the dampness of blood coming from the animal.
Heaving against the beam slightly, he created enough give to unpin the creature and pull it out into the light.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, carefully setting it onto a soft pile of soil at his feet. “It's a fox. A fox pup more likely. I'll get a box and bring you to the surface for animal welfare to sort out.”
Blood ran from a gash on the animal's side, but it was still breathing and didn't appear to have any broken bones, even around the leg which had been pinned under the beam.
He leaned in closely, finding a short piece of thin metal by his side, and was on the verge of turning the animal over to see its other side, when it suddenly woke, growled viscously, and kicked the piece of metal in his hand hard enough for it to puncture his palm, and protrude roughly from the other side.
Tim screamed from the pain and shock, and Rinan paid him little attention as he flipped onto his paws and ran past the Hantsa into the dark.
*
Cedd was amongst the crush of foxes near the fountain, watching the drooping form of his friend and his master inside their cage. He was conflicted, as were the other Inari struggling around him who had survived the purging by the palace guard. A desperate need to be close to the fountain drove them against each other but a faint memory lingered of what was meant to be a rescue attempt.
He looked up, grinding his jaws with glee and despair, at the form of Gremian standing on top of the fountain, foam and spittle coming from his mouth as he spoke to the heaving crowd.
“It has come, my brethren, the time to give new life and meaning to the Great Burrow. I will bring you the Light. I will flick away the fading and burn the font of consciousness across our world. WITH TRAITOR'S BLOOD TO CLEANSE AND...TO RENEW!”
The chant built amongst the
delirious crowd, until the reverberations of it sent a shiver along the banks of the Thames and pedestrians crossing Tower Bridge stopped to listen to the strange hissing echo.
“TRAITOR'S BLOOD TO CLEANSE...TRAITOR'S BLOOD RENEW!”
Cedd fought the desire, and held out longer than Inari twice his size, but eventually all thought of rescue fled from his mind and he too joined the chant and was lost in the rhythmic ecstasy of it.
“TRAITOR'S BLOOD RENEW!”
*
A power was growing within him, with each leap and with every step that brought them closer to the end of the great tide of foxes in flight. When Roe saw the light of the rotunda ahead, it hit him with a jolt. His eyes glowed and, as he passed, the foxes around him felt a momentary respite from the uncontrollable urge to push forward.
Scarlett navigated the crowd next to him, all intoxicating effects of the impeding cleansing banished from her mind by the growing power of Roe by her side.
He felt as if he was on fire, but felt no pain. He felt as though the Light was shining through him and the fox that he had been was gone, washed away by the ferocious energy. It was the same energy he had felt before in those uncontrollable spurts of sound, but this time it was constant and felt as though he could tap into it at will.
They burst through a pile of foxes nearly blocking off the massive entrance into the royal rotunda, and the light at its centre seemed to respond to his presence, giving off a bleeding spark of light that cut through the air and across the ceiling far overhead. Rubble crashed and rained onto the crowd, killing some and sparing others, but diminishing little the terrifying screams and laughter and the constant call to sacrifice.
His vision focused through the chaos around him onto the metal reliquary. He could see the shadowy forms of foxes within.
“I must get Mercia and Daegal out of there,” he said to Scarlett over his shoulder, the foxes around him seeming to be repelled, creating a circle of calm in which they stood.
The Progeny of Able (The Burrow of London Series Book 1) Page 33
