by Jon Evans
"The King Beneath is here," the rat said coolly, without looking up at Patch. "It is death to look upon the King Beneath."
Patch said, "I don't care if you're King of the whole world."
The rat laughed with genuine mirth, then took a few steps towards Patch, coming close enough to recognize. Patch blinked with surprise. The rat was Lord Snout.
"Oh, this is too delicious," Snout chortled. "You actually thought I was the King Beneath. You really have no idea."
Patch hesitated, uneasy. That terrible nameless scent was intensifying.
"Where is Sniffer?" he demanded.
"Sniffer is dead," Snout said. "His usefulness ended, and he died as you will die. You should have died thrice over already. What shadow fell over your destiny, squirrel? Who sent you to find the Queen of All Cats? What brought you to the Kingdom Beneath? … It doesn't matter. The King Beneath laughs at destiny. The King Beneath is the killer of fate. I hope you don't think you've won the war. I would hate for you to die with such a wrongheaded belief. Cats can't save your doomed kingdom. Too many of you have died already. You are too weak to survive what comes next. All creatures of darkness serve the King Beneath. All of them. And when he comes, all will flock to his command."
The water beneath the bridge began to shimmer and ripple. There was something moving in it, something pale and enormous, drifting through darkness towards the stone bridge. Patch took an involuntary step back.
"You are greatly honoured to die in the jaws of the King Beneath," Snout whispered.
The pale reptilian thing in the water was bigger than any human. Its scaly and sinuous tail, as long as a large dog, widened from a sharp tip into a thick, flat torso armoured in pebbled white scales, from which four stubby limbs protruded, topped by claws the size of Patch's paws. Its broad snout was mostly mouth: flat and triangular, big enough to swallow a small dog whole, adorned by vast, barbed, serrated yellow teeth. Behind and above this gigantic maw, two dark protruding eyes like lay half-concealed behind a bony ridge.
Patch stared, frozen with absolute horror, as the King Beneath rose towards him. He couldn't move. He felt rooted to the bridge. He heard Snout speaking in a hissing, slithering language that was neither Mammal nor Bird. He saw the King's maw open wide, saw its enormous muscles coil and tense, ready to lunge and devour. Its eyes were like black abysses, and Patch couldn't look away from them, he felt dizzy, about to topple, about to fall into those black pits that were eyes, fall into them and keep falling forever…
White screamed, "Patch, run!"
Her shout broke the spell. The King Beneath leaped from the water like a lightning bolt; but its gargantuan jaws clashed together on empty air as Patch jumped away, back onto the brick ledge that surrounded the room. The monster fell back into the pool. Dark water fountained up, soaking Patch where he stood. The resulting wave rippled across the pool - and as it did, Patch thought he saw something else moving in the water; something white and scaly, something much like the King Beneath, only much smaller, or perhaps younger.
"Run!" White insisted.
"Oh, no, it's much too late for running," Snout gloated. "There's nothing left for you now but dying."
The water erupted again; and this time, to Patch's horror, the King Beneath launched itself completely out of the water and onto the stone bridge. It flailed clumsily with its stubby limbs for a moment before righting itself and turning its massive body towards Patch. Its white scales and yellow fangs dripped with water.
9. Roots
Patch's every instinct screamed at him to turn and flee. And if he had, his story would have ended there. The King Beneath was just small enough to run along the Croton Road, and to fit into the smaller tunnels connected by the stone bridge; and although it lived in water, it could run with incredible speed, faster than a horse or a dog. It would have run him down and eaten him in the space of a few breaths.
But Patch did not run. His mother lay on that stone bridge behind that monster, lay poisoned and motionless but not dead, and he would not abandon her. Instead, as the King Beneath charged towards him with the speed of a diving hawk, Patch ran towards it; and in the moment it wavered with surprise, he jumped with all his might, leaped over its fanged and slavering maw, and landed on its stubby neck.
He almost skidded off and fell into the pool. The white scales of the King Beneath were slippery with water and harder than bark, and its enormous muscles squirmed beneath him as it sprinted forward. Patch kept moving, knowing that only momentum kept him upright. He sprinted down the length of the King Beneath, halfway along its curving tail, and leaped onto the stone bridge behind, only a few squirrel-lengths away from Lord Snout's stunned and aghast expression.
Patch didn't stop. He kept running, straight at Snout. His fangs were bare and he was snarling with rage. Snout went still for an instant, frozen by sheer astonishment. Then he scurried towards the edge of the bridge, ready to flee into the dark water - but he was too slow; his moment of surprise had lasted just too long. Patch charged headfirst into the huge rat, sending them both tumbling across the stone bridge. Snout's fangs tore into Patch's shoulder. Patch's teeth met in Snout's throat. Rat-blood spurted. Lord Snout shuddered a moment. Then he lay still.
Patch straightened and turned around, fully expecting to see the King Beneath's jaws closing in on him. But the monster was nowhere to be seen. Its charge had taken it past Patch into the small cross-tunnel; and while the King Beneath could run like the wind, and swim like a fish, and kill almost anything its jaws closed upon, one thing it could not do was move backwards much faster than a crawling slug. Instead of the fanged maw of the King Beneath, Patch saw only the tip of its tail laboriously retreating from that tunnel - and he saw White, greatly daring, racing past that flickering tail to join him on the bridge.
He also saw, in the dark water, another creature like the King Beneath, this one the size of a small dog.
"Hurry!" Patch cried.
He and White rushed to Silver's fallen form.
"Cure her," Patch said urgently.
"I can't!"
Patch stared at White. "You said you could save her!"
"I can - I think - but I will need you both, and it will take time!"
"We don't have any time!"
"I'm sorry, I can't," White repeated. "We have to get her out of here."
Patch nodded and looked nervously at the King Beneath, slowly emerging from the tunnel. "All right. Hurry."
But they couldn't hurry. They had enough strength to take Patch's mother's limbs gently in their jaws and push her along the stone bridge towards the other small tunnel, but the process was slow and laborious. They had only gotten Silver to the mouth of the tunnel when the King Beneath finally freed itself from the opposite tunnel and turned to face them. When it saw Snout's fallen form, its dark eyes fixed on Patch, and its throat began to hiss and rattle with murderous growls. The monster advanced across the stone bridge, moving slowly, stalking Patch carefully. This time there would be no mistakes.
"Get her out of here," Patch said grimly to White, and turned to face the King Beneath.
He knew he only had one chance. Patch waited for a moment. Then he ran straight at the white monster on the stone bridge.
The monster reared back, ready for another jump-over attempt; but this time Patch leaped before he reached the King Beneath, leaped and caught hold of the tangled roots that dangled almost onto the bridge. To his terror his momentum carried him swinging onwards, along the bridge, towards the King Beneath's open mouth. He hadn't expected that - the monster leaped up at him - and it snapped its jaws together just as Patch let go of the root and caught another with one paw. The King Beneath's teeth barely missed him as they crunched together.
The root Patch barely held began to spin crazily as it swung from side to side, slapping him into a thick cluster of roots. Patch grabbed blindly at that tangled cluster and hung on. He was no longer spinning, but he was still dizzy, the world still seemed to be whirling around him a
t a sickening speed. He caught a blurry glimpse of the monster beneath him. It was crouching to leap.
Patch closed his eyes and made himself race up this branch-thick tangle of roots without thinking, as if he was running up a tree. The King Beneath leaped again. This time its massive jaws snapped together on Patch's tail, cutting it in two. The monster fell back to the stone bridge, but landed awkwardly and slipped back into the pool of dark water beneath.
Patch howled with shock and pain. Blood fell in a red rivulet from the stump of his severed tail as he climbed the damp tangle of roots, and kept climbing until he reached the ceiling. At this height Patch was surrounded by a cloud of roots, he could barely make out anything when he squinted downwards, but he was sure he would have seen White or Silver if they were still visible on the bridge. White had at least dragged his mother out of the chamber of the King Beneath and into the small cross tunnel. It was something.
His tail, what was left of it, throbbed with agony, and without its full length his balance felt all wrong; Patch almost fell when he turned around and began to make his way back down for a better view. He couldn't hang on to these slippery roots forever, he had to try to ignore the mind-swallowing pain of his tail at least until he escaped.
The chamber appeared empty. The King Beneath and the smaller monster seemed to have departed. But Patch didn't trust his eyes. He watched very carefully as he descended towards the bridge, and as he emerged from the thick cloud of roots in the heart of the domed roof, he saw a tiny ripple in the water beside the bridge, and he knew that dark eyes were watching him carefully.
Patch hung on those roots for what felt like a long time. He knew that if he dropped to the bridge, the monster would take him. He could try to outwait it - but he knew that would never succeed. The King Beneath was ancient and cold-blooded. It would wait as long as it needed to catch its prey. These roots were slippery, Patch was bleeding badly from his tail, and his shoulder ached where Snout had bitten it, that foreleg was losing strength. He had to do something soon or he would fall involuntarily. But what?
He remembered when he had first leaped up into the roots, how his momentum had unexpectedly swung him towards the enemy. Patch began to rock his body back and forth, experimentally at first, to see if anything happened at all; and when it did, when the root he hung on began to move in wide curving arcs, he threw himself into it, swung himself with all his might up and down the length of the stone bridge. There was only one chance. Not yet - not yet - now.
Patch let go of the root and soared through the air. It felt like falling off a high branch. He curled himself into a ball just before he flew into the mouth of the cross tunnel where White had gone. The impact of landing rattled his bones and mind, and for a moment he lay there senseless; but then he heard showering water as something enormous surged out of the dark pool and onto the bridge, and sheer panic brought him to his feet and set him running.
This tunnel was circular, and made of metal corrugated in little hoops around the inside. There was a little water in it and Patch splashed loudly as he ran up its dark length. There was just enough light to see that it divided into two similar but smaller tunnels not far from the Croton Road. As he reached that junction, Patch heard something lumbering up the tunnel towards him with incredible speed; but his heart soared, and he actually smiled. The King Beneath was much too large for these smaller tunnels, and he could smell which direction White had gone. He pelted and skidded down the right-hand fork, which bent down and around, running parallel to the Croton Road, until suddenly he shot into a small chamber with a concrete floor.
10. The Chamber of Bones
Patch cried out with pain. He hadn't fallen far, but he had fallen onto the searing agony of his severed tail.
"Patch!" White gasped, not far away. "Are you all right?"
He groaned. "I think so."
He made his way slowly towards her through the eyeless darkness. The concrete floor was wet and cracked. He could hear water trickling and dripping behind him, in the tunnel he had entered, and in several places to his right.
White sniffed the air. "Is that blood? Are you hurt?"
"My tail," Patch groaned.
"Oh, no. Oh, Patch, I'm so sorry."
His nose touched White's side. "Never mind me. Did you get Silver here too?"
"Yes. She's right here."
"Can you save her?"
"I don't know. Maybe. There's one way -"
Both of them fell silent. There was a scuttling noise coming towards them, the scrabbling of claws on metal, something coming down the metal tunnel. Patch suddenly envisioned the smaller monster in the dark water. Could it fit through that tunnel? He was terrified that it could.
"The little one's coming!" he said. "Hurry!"
He grabbed Silver's leg with a mouth and began to drag her towards the several trickling sounds behind them. White hesitated a moment before joining him. The thing in the tunnel rattled closer. Patch pulled harder, moving as fast as he could.
The bleeding stump of his tail brushed against something metal and he groaned before turning to investigate. There was another metal tunnel here, this one barely big enough for a squirrel. It ramped down so sharply that if it was long enough the fall might kill them.
Something big and wet squelched out of the larger tunnel and onto the chamber's concrete floor. The little monster was in the room with them. They had no choice. Patch dragged Silver back with one final desperate push, and then they were falling, sliding through a hinged metal flap and skidding steeply down along corrugated metal walls.
Patch screamed when he hit bottom. They hadn't fallen far, less than a squirrel's length, but he had landed severed-tail-first on a carpet of sharp little things like sticks, and Silver's weight was on top of him. Then White landed on them both and agony exploded through his body. He had no breath nor strength with which to scream again.
"I'm sorry, Patch, I'm sorry!" she gasped, as he wept and choked with the pain.
"No," he managed. "Don't be sorry. We're alive. We're safe."
He pulled himself away from White and Silver. This chamber was if anything even darker than the last. A thick layer of dry and hard twiglike things covered its concrete floor like dead leaves in late autumn. They shifted and rustled as he stepped on them. It wasn't until he slipped on something smooth and rounded that he began to understand what they were. He had slipped on a skull. These were rat bones, hundreds of them.
"What is this place?" he gasped.
White had no answer. Something was moving about, hissing and snuffling, and Patch smelled something very like the King Beneath. The other monster. But little as it was compared to the King Beneath, it was much too large to fit into this chamber. They were safe - from it, at least.
"Never mind," Patch said. He decided to worry about whatever had killed these hundreds of rats if and when the time came. "How do we help Silver?"
He returned to where his mother's apparently lifeless form lay limp amid the heaped rat bones.
"Blood," White said. "It's your blood that makes you immune. She needs your blood."
"But - how?"
"Patch, you're already bleeding. This might kill you. It might kill you both."
"I don't care," he said. "What do I need to do?"
White was silent for some time. Then she moved, first to Silver, and to Patch. He felt her head against his, nuzzling his neck softly.
"Hold very still," she said softly, and bit him hard on the side of his neck.
Patch yowled with pain and surprise.
"Hurry!" she said urgently. "Lie down next to her, put your wound against hers. You have to share your blood with her. It's her only chance."
Patch obeyed. His mother's fur felt cold and dead, and her blood ran cool, and smelled of rot and decay. He pressed his bleeding neck against hers and kept up as much pressure as he could.
"How long?" he asked.
"I don't know," White said. "A long time."
Patch began to grow a l
ittle dizzy, and then weak. His neck began to throb, and then his head began to pound, joining the stabbing hurt of his severed tail in a symphony of agony. He felt dizzy, and the darkness around him seemed somehow to be blurring, and he began to shiver with cold. He remembered dimly that this was what the blackblood disease had been like. He was absorbing it from Silver, as she was absorbing his blood. And he was not immune. It was worse this time than last. The pain and weakness was so great that he almost didn't feel Silver beginning to shudder against him.
White said something, but Patch could no longer comprehend her, all his senses were smeared into a gray blur. He felt himself being moved, but he did not understand how or where or why. He had never felt so awful in all his life. He was sick, dizzy, confused, helpless, full of pain. He seemed frozen in an eternity of suffering. He wanted to die. Anything that would make this all-devouring misery go away would be a blessing.
Eventually he became aware that something had changed, something was different. The dizziness was going away. The headache was diminishing. The nausea was fading. He was slowly getting better, but he was still helplessly weak, desperately thirsty, ravenously hungry.
"Water… " he groaned, barely able to speak at all.
Something nudged against him. An empty rat-skull full of water. Patch drank. It helped a little.
"Is he going to be all right?" a voice asked that sounded almost as weak as his own.
"I think so," White said. "If only there was some food!"
The other voice said, sighing, "I'm so hungry."
Patch agreed with that sentiment. He had never been so hungry in all his life, not even that winter day he had gone into the mountains for food. That day seemed so long ago its memory was like something that had happened to a different squirrel, like a story he had once been told.
11. The Princess
"Here," White said, "Eat this."
Something damp and floppy brushed against Patch's face. It had a rich, earthy scent, like a mushroom. He was so hungry he bit into it without asking what it was, and so weak he could barely break off a piece to chew. It was fibrous and tasteless, like eating spongy bark, but it was better than nothing. Patch ate until it was gone.
