by Jon Evans
"No," he panted, "save Silver! Kill Snout! The big rat right next to me, you should have taken him! And Sniffer was there too, and Redeye!"
"Bloody moon and darkened sun!" Karmerruk cursed, wheeling around in a dizzyingly tight turn, and then stooping into a howling dive.
"Put me down, go back and get them!" Patch said.
Karmerruk didn't put Patch down - he actually dropped him onto a tall tree. Patch tumbled through its leaves, struck his head hard against a big branch, barely managed to catch hold of a smaller one, and dangled from it for a dizzying moment before he pulled himself to safety. That effort and the blow to the head were too much for him. The world swam gray around him, and then went dark.
When he came to, the screams and snarls of battle still continued below. Patch tottered to his paws. It took him a moment to realize he stood on the maple that King Thorn had used to store food. He looked down, ready to charge back into the fray - and saw that no hope remained. The war was all but over.
Beneath him the final battle raged around the base of Thorn's oak tree. Zelina and her cats were fighting desperately with their backs to its trunk. The King's territories had diminished to that single tree, and the rats were everywhere, and worst of all, they were growing in number, in the dim moonlight Patch could see more reinforcements streaking in from all directions. He groaned with despair.
Then Patch blinked and squinted at the ground. Something about the scene beneath him seemed wrong. Those reinforcements. He tried to focus his straining eyes on the creatures racing into the battle from all around. Rats were not so large, and did not move with such speed and liquid grace -
Patch gasped. Those weren't rat reinforcements. They were cats. And there were dozens of them, scores, more than a hundred, there was an entire host of cats racing into the battle, coming in ones and twos from north and south and east and west, leaping into the fray, tearing into Snout's rat army from behind and shredding it like dry leaves.
Patch watched Snout's army come apart in the face of this deadly and unexpected foe. First it unravelled slowly from the outside; then the whorls and eddies of chaos spun inwards to the front, where the rats were on the verge of overrunning what was left of King Thorn's army; and then, sudden as a lightning bolt, the rat army dissipated all at once, scattered in all directions like a dandelion in a hurricane, and fled to the four corners of the Center Kingdom.
It took Patch some time to realize that the Battle of the North was over.
13. Victory
Patch was dizzy and bleeding from a dozen wounds, but none seemed vital. He downstumbled to the ground and into a moonlit chaos of milling cats and squirrels. The ground was wet with blood, littered with corpses of rats and squirrels and cats; the sighs and groans of the wounded accumulated into a near-roar; and he had to breathe through his mouth to avoid being overcome by the stabbing intensity of the blood and death and desperation that permeated the air. Patch raced to where he had last seen Silver and began to frantically search through the dead and wounded. But she was nowhere.
"Patch," a drained voice called, and Twitch limped over to join him. Twitch's right foreleg could barely support his weight, and a huge, bloody flap of fur hung loosely from his back, along the length of his spine. "We won."
It sounded more an epitaph than a cry of triumph.
"Have you seen Silver?" Patch demanded. "She was fighting Snout, I saw her."
Twitch shook his head.
A huge flapping shadow settled to the ground before Patch.
"Snout escaped," Karmerruk said in a grating voice.
He opened his claws and the ruined corpse of a small squirrel fell to the ground. Patch hesitated, squinted, and his eyes widened with recognition.
"Redeye," he said. "The false King."
Karmerruk shrugged as if all squirrels were the same to him.
"My mother, with the silver fur, Snout was fighting her, did you see her?" Patch asked.
"No." Karmerruk considered. "I saw rats dragging away dead squirrels, and perhaps one seemed to shine in the light, but none of those rats were Snout."
The hawk spread his wings and ascended. Patch stared after him, watched him disappear into the night sky, thinking furiously. He didn't want to think it, much less admit it - but in his heart he knew Silver was almost certainly dead, and the rats had taken her corpse. But why?
A new and feline voice interrupted his reverie: Alabast. The big white cat was scored with many fresh wounds, but still looked ready for battle. He said, "Patch, the Queen would speak with you."
Patch followed Alabast back to the oak. Twitch staggered along behind. Around them, clouds of crows had already begun to descend and feed on the dead. Most of the living were too tired or hurt to drive them away. Zelina stood in the midst of a reverent crowd of dozens of cats beneath the great oak. There was blood on her whiskers. Stardancer and Sharpclaw were outside the feline mob, and Patch paused briefly to speak with them.
"Have you seen Silver?" he asked.
Stardancer shook his head sadly.
"Redeye is dead."
"So is King Thorn."
Patch grunted. "I suppose that makes you King."
"I? But - the Center Kingdom has never had a Northern king -"
Patch shrugged carelessly and followed Alabast through the feline mob. Most of the cats looked at him suspiciously until they saw the way Zelina smiled at him.
"I dispatched envoys before I joined you here," she said. "There are many cats on this island, Patch son of Silver. Most live fat with their human attendants, but they were still born ready for battle, and I am still their Queen. When roused we are the mightiest army on all this island, save perhaps for the humans themselves."
"I'm very glad."
"Is your mother -"
"She's gone," Patch said, in a voice that was nearly a howl, "she's gone, she's dead and they took her away."
"Oh, Patch, oh, no," Zelina breathed. "Oh, I'm so sorry."
Patch collapsed trembling to the ground, and Zelina came over to comfort him, and the cats all around sighed with surprise to see the sorrow and tenderness with which she touched him.
"Sleep," she whispered. "I won't tell you things will be better when you wake, dear Patch, but sleep. Day will come. You will heal. It was her time."
Then a new voice said, "Wait."
Patch looked up forlornly at White, who had somehow slipped into the crowd of cats.
"They took her away?" the albino squirrel asked.
"Yes, I couldn't find her, Karmerruk said he saw rats dragging dead squirrels away, they must have taken her -"
"No."
"No what?"
"Not dead. They don't take the dead. They take the blackblood-bitten. They take them to be eaten alive by the King Beneath."
Patch came suddenly to his feet. "Then Silver's alive!"
Zelina shook her head. "By now she's gone, Patch. There are passages to the underworld all through this island. She's gone into the Kingdom Beneath."
Patch thought of the dog-thing with golden eyes that called itself Coyote.
"I know," he said. "I know where they're taking her."
14. To the Gate
"This is madness," Zelina said, "you're hurt, Patch, you're exhausted, you have a head wound, you can't think right, you need to sleep! At least wait until dawn."
"I can't. By dawn it will be too late."
"No, Patch, don't do this. This is dark-mooned madness. You can't save her."
"Maybe not," he said, "but I'm going to try."
"How? Where are you going to go?"
"A place I know."
"Even if you find her, even if you singlehandedly kill all the rats in the Kingdom Beneath, and Lord Snout and the King Beneath too, she has the blackblood disease, how can you save her? You'll never be able to bring her out to the surface to be healed."
Patch shook his head. He knew Zelina only wanted to protect him, but she didn't understand. This wasn't a time for sensible questions and answe
rs, this was a time for action.
"There is a way," White said.
All eyes turned to her.
"If you find her, there is a way to save her."
"How?"
White took a deep breath. "I will show you. I will come with you."
A silence fell over the watching cats and squirrels.
"You know I can't come with you," Zelina said quietly to Patch. "I am a Queen. I have my duties to my people. I cannot abandon them to join you in your madness."
He nodded.
"Are you truly set on this?"
He nodded. After a moment White did too.
"Very well." She sighed, and then said in a ringing voice, "Alabast, go with them as far as the underworld, keep them safe as long as the moon smiles on them."
Alabast nodded shortly, then turned to Patch and said, simply, "Which way?"
Patch said, "South."
He hesitated before he left, then turned to Zelina.
"In case I don't come back," he said, "go to the stone spire. I think you'll see something there."
Then Patch turned and began to run to the south, towards the Great Sea, moving at a staggering run, and White and Alabast followed. They ran through the night. Weariness descended on Patch like a heavy cloud, and he soon felt as if his very bones had gone weak; he had to rest for longer and longer periods to recover his strength; but all through that night he refused to stop and sleep.
"Something is following us," Alabast said softly, as the three of them rested in the narrow forested passageway east of the Great Sea.
Patch blinked. "What?"
"I don't know. It's staying downwind and far away. It's bigger than a rat. And it either has cat's eyes or a dog's nose to be tracking us from so far away."
Patch thought of Sniffer, the arch-traitor and architect of all this ruinous war.
"Maybe the Queen sent another cat to watch over us?" White asked hopefully.
Alabast shook his head. "That's not her way." He looked to Patch. "I can try to go run it down."
"No," Patch said. Another possibility had occurred to him. Maybe it was Coyote.
They continued moving; even after the moon sank beneath the horizon and the night's darkness was pure and absolute, they followed Alabast's night-eyes around the Great Sea, alongside the human highway that spanned the Center Kingdom, and into the slope walled on one side by old bricks. Once there Patch did not need to look for the hole. Its scent of festering alien decay was unmistakable even amid the enveloping stench of Rat.
"What is that smell?" Alabast whispered, and for the first time, Patch heard fear in the big white cat's voice, and his fur began to bristle like pine needles.
White said, "The Kingdom Beneath."
Alabast stared at the gateway as if the darkness itself might leap out and attack. A few heartbeats of silence passed. In them Patch heard a scuttling sound.
"There's something moving in there," White whispered.
"It's guarded!" Alabast said. "Back away, now!"
But he was too late. As he spoke, a score of rats poured out of the utter darkness of the gateway, and charged at the two squirrels and one cat. They had just enough time before battle was joined for Patch to realize that despite Alabast's strength and ferocity, the rats were far too many.
Then something big and sleek and fast leaped down from the top of the ditch into the heart of the rats. Patch, too consumed by immediate peril to wonder what it was, tried to dodge a charging rat, but moved too slowly. He stumbled and fell, and there were two rats on top of him open - but then both were swept away by the long, sharp claws of a slashing paw. Patch struggled to his feet and stared flabbergasted as his unexpected savior and Alabast fought the guardian rats until a dozen were dead and the remainder had fled.
"Talis!" he gasped.
And indeed it was the same fox he had met in the Hidden Kingdom, who had first trapped him and Zelina in snares, then helped them to escape from the metal cages. But Talis looked different now. He was gaunt and scarred, and he looked at Patch with wild eyes on the edge of madness.
"Patch son of Silver," he rasped. "Oh, how I long for your death."
Alabast quickly interposed himself between the fox and the squirrel.
Talis smiled grimly. "You're brave enough, cat. You wouldn't last more than a few breaths, if I could fight you. Don't you waste your life on his."
"You shall not pass," Alabast said softly.
"Oh, please. Don't be so melodramatic. It doesn't matter. I long for his death, but I cannot act against either you or him. I am moon-sworn to protect him, and to never again attack cat or squirrel." He turned his staring gaze on Patch. "You can't imagine what it's like. I have been searching for you for a whole moon-cycle now, and through every day and night, every breath and heartbeat, that oath has burned inside me like I swallowed a living flame. And when you are in danger it worsens. Last night I felt like the sun itself burned inside me. I prayed for your death as I ran to find you and save you. But the moon laughs at me. I arrived too late and yet somehow you survived. You don't know what I've been through, what sacrifices I made for the sake of this sun-cursed oath. I hate you with all my soul, Patch son of Silver. Before I met you I lived a life of song and poetry, I supped every day on sweet warm blood. Now my life is nothing but ashes and gnawed bones. Now all that I am is madness."
Patch didn't know what to say.
"I swore to protect both you and that cat. How I hate you both, my twin torturers. How can I fulfil both oaths when you are no longer together? It's pulling me apart. I can't even sleep without dreaming of you both. You have made of me a mad and starving thing. You are cruel, Patch son of Silver, you are a cruel and evil creature."
"I am not!" Patch protested. "I didn't know! I'm sorry! I only made you swear because otherwise you would have eaten me!"
"Better you had killed me. I would have ended my own life long ago, but that too would break the oath."
"You should not have sworn," Alabast said unexpectedly. "An oath by the moon is nothing to trifle with."
"Don't you think I know that?" Talis snarled. "Don't you think I have brooded and will brood on nothing else for all my days until the last forgetting?"
"I'm sorry," Patch said. "I thank you for saving us. And I wish I knew some way to release you. But I have to go."
"Go where?"
"The Kingdom Beneath."
Talis arched his back and hissed. "I could stop you. I could grab you and take you to a safe place and keep you there forever, you and that vicious cat-queen both. That would protect you, wouldn't it? I could keep you both safe and caged until you die. That would fulfil my oath."
Patch tried to walk to the gate; but Talis leaped to intercept him, and stood between him and the sighing darkness. Alabast tensed, ready to pounce.
"No," Patch said. He turned to Talis. "You wouldn't be able to do it. Not without harming us. That would break your oath."
"I'm a fox. I'm clever. I'll think of some way. I won't let you go from me, Patch. You can't understand. Even the thought is like swallowing poison."
Patch said, "If I die, the oath dies."
Talis hesitated. "True."
"I'm going into the Kingdom Beneath. And that hole is too small for you to possibly follow."
"The Kingdom Beneath," Talis said, and his burning eyes turned thoughtful for a moment. "Why?"
"That's my business," Patch said.
"Am I correct in surmising that you have virtually no chance of survival?"
Patch sighed. "I'm afraid so."
Talis considered. Then he stepped aside. "It seems I am permitted some interpretation of the oath's execution … Go, Patch son of Silver. Go and know that I burn and pray through every breath and heartbeat for your death."
Patch looked at White. She was shivering, but she nodded. He looked up to Alabast.
"I can't fit in there either," the big white cat said. "And I'd rather fight a thousand rats than whatever is beyond that gate. Don't do it, Patch.
Don't go. You'll never return."
"Say goodbye to Zelina for me," Patch said.
Then he marched through the gateway, and into the Kingdom Beneath; and White followed.
Chapter 3
The Kingdom Beneath
1. Descent
Patch and White passed through the little hole in the ancient brick wall, skidded down a steep dirt tunnel so narrow it scraped against Patch's back and sides, and emerged into empty and absolute darkness. Only the hollow echo of dripping water indicated that they were in some kind of vast cave.
After a few steps forward Patch came to a despairing halt. He hadn't understood that this was what the underworld was like. His eyes were useless, and his nose scarcely less so: the ground on which they stood was damp with rotting sludge, and the reek of decay was overwhelming. For a moment he thought his mission hopeless. He would never be able find anything down in this opaque blackness. He was already lost, he was so exhausted he was stumbling, and his dozen wounds from the battle were hurting more and more.
Patch shook his head, breathed deeply, took a moment to steady himself and adjust to the darkness. He slowly came to realize there was more to this dark air than stagnant warmth. He felt and smelled a cool and sighing breeze, faint but unmistakable, a sickly zephyr imbued with a strange and bitter scent that made him shudder. It wasn't much of a trail, but it was something.
He turned to his left and began to walk blindly into that breath of alien air. White followed. He could hear her quick and nervous breaths. His instincts told him to turn back, run, escape. He ignored them.
"Are you sure this will take us to Silver?" White asked, and her voice was trembling.
Patch didn't reply.
"Because this feels like absolute madness!"
"You don't have to come. It's okay if you want to leave. I'll find a way."
A long time seemed to pass before White answered, "No. I'll stay."
Patch hesitated, asked, "Why?"
At first he didn't think she was going to answer. Then she said, quietly, "My whole life, other squirrels have kept away from me like I was a rat. You don't know what that's like. When you left my tree, that whole day, I kept thinking, this will never happen again, I'll never find another squirrel who will talk to me, my whole life. You're my friend. If I go back I'll never have a friend again. You don't know what it's like. It's better to die."
