“A truce used to exist between the common folk and the monks. They’ve broken that with their detestable doings.
Nothing was left to us but to try and put a stop to them permanently, before they can go any further.”
“Go any further with what?” Viz asked him. “Snaugenhutt! All of you, you’d better come and listen to this.” The rhino nodded, ambled over. The crowd retreated to make room for him.
Wurragarr turned and peered into the assemblage. “Mowara! Where’s Mowara?”
A pinkish-white avian fluttered out of the crowd to land without ceremony on the roo’s left shoulder. In addition to a light blue-and-green-checked scarf, a mother-of-pearl anklet flashed from his left leg.
“Mowara’s actually been inside the monastery,” Wurragarr informed them. “He’s the closest thing we have to a spy. He’s taken a big risk.”
The galah nodded. “They pluck birds up there. Seen it myself.” He shuddered, feathers quivering. “Horrible. You should see their new guards. Great awful things, all claws and fangs and beaks.”
“Mowara confirmed the stories we’d been hearing,” Wurragarr went on. “Confirmed them, and worse.”
“Too right, mate.”
Then- spy was old, Buncan thought. His eyes were dulled with age and his beak worn. His attitude suggested the first stages of senility. Or maybe he was just a little crazy. Could he be believed? Wurragarr seemed to trust him completely.
“People have been abducted,” the roo was saying, “and taken to the monastery.” His voice was grim. “Lately the monks favor cubs and infants, those of travelers and out-landers as much as local folk. Most are never seen again. But there have been a few escapees. Mowara confirms what they’ve told us.”
“Seen them at work, the Dark Ones.” The galah stretched his aged wings significantly. “Heard them talking. Saw things.”
“Cor, wot sorts o’ things?” Neena inquired. In front of her, Squill affected an air of bored indifference.
“Saw them,” the galah insisted. “Tampering.”
“Tampering with what?” Buncan wanted to know.
The bird leaned forward, and his eyes bulged. “Nature. The Dark Monks, they’re tampering with Nature itself.”
CHAPTER 21
“I don’t understand,” Buncan said cautiously.
“Who does, who does?” Pink wings flapped urgently. “The Dark Ones don’t understand either, but that doesn’t stop them. The forces of life, the threads that bind it together, that’s what they’re stuck into up there on that mountaintop. Weavers they think they are, but all they can tie are knots, nasty knots.” Though there was no need to lower his voice, he leaned forward and whispered.
“Used to be just irritating, the monks were. Not no more. Want to control it all now. Not just the hills and valleys. All of it. The whole world.
“I’ve heard them speak words, words I don’t understand. Nobody understands them, including the Dark Ones. But they use ‘em. Words of somber power, traveler. Words unknown to the monks until a year previous.”
“What sort of words?” Gragelouth slowly dismounted. “I am quite facile with words.”
“Not these, mate, not these. Words like . . .” The galah struggled to remember. He was old enough, Buncan mused, that his memory was no longer his servant but a constant irksome challenge.
Squill whistled derisively. “ ‘Ell, there ain’t no bloomin’ mystery words.”
“Desoxyribonucleic acid!” the galah abruptly blurted. “Peptide chains! Molecular carbon. Heterocyclic compounds. Enzymatic cortical displacement.” He blinked.
It all sounded like nonsense to Buncan. But organized nonsense. Necromantic or not, organized nonsense could be dangerous. Maybe Clothahump could have made sense of the galah’s ravings. Buncan couldn’t, nor could Gragelouth.
“Cross-nuclear chromosomal ingestion. Forced immune system rejection repression.” Mowara was gesturing wildly with both wingtips. “They use these words to commit iniquities. To make things.”
“What ‘things’?” Buncan pressed him. “New things. Outrages. Horrors.” Even Bedarra was subdued as the bird rambled on. “New kinds of people.” Neena’s expression reflected her confusion. “How can you make new kinds o’ people?”
“By combining them. I saw them, I saw them myself.” His voice fell again. “They take a wallaby. Then they take a lynx. Tie ‘em up and put ‘em in a cauldron. Pour foul-smelling liquids over them. Then the Dark Ones come out, the monks in charge. They chant the words.” Buncan could see that the galah was all but overcome by his own memories. But the bird pressed on.
“Vapors cover that cauldron. You can’t see. The Dark Ones chant louder. Now you hear the sounds.” Again he shuddered. “The chanting fades away. So does the smoke. And that poor wallaby, and that poor lynx, they’re gone.”
“Gone?” Gragelouth swallowed.
“Gone, departed. Something in their place. Some things. One useless, dribbling and drooling, gone. The other, a combining. Legs of a wallaby, eyes of a cat. Tail of a wallaby, claws and teeth of a cat. Ugly, nasty, evil. No mind of its own anymore. Does what the Dark Ones tell it.”
“What do they do with the unsuccessful half?” Neena was unsmiling.
Mowara stared at her. “What do you think?” She didn’t push him to elaborate.
“That was a good one,” the galah insisted. “Seen worse. One head, three eyes. One body, six legs, all mixed up. Two tails. Two heads. Horrors. Lose their bodies, lose their selves. Lose their wills. Belong to the Dark Ones now. Do their will.”
“But whyT’ Buncan demanded to know. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard of. To take two healthy, happy individuals and do that to them . . . it’s worse than the stories I’ve been told of the Plated Folk.”
“Sounds bloody ridiculous to me.” Squill looked bored. “Does it now?” The galah gazed up at the otter with such unexpected intensity that Squill blinked involuntarily. “Wouldn’t think so if you’d seen some of the things, some of the things I’ve seen. Mole-rats merged with gazelles. Koalas all mixed up with hawks. Numbats with fish fins.”
“But what can it all be for?” Gragelouth wanted to know.
“Not sure. Heard the Dark Ones wanted to make people more beautiful. At first. That doesn’t justify the tampering, no sir. They had some successes. Got ideas, got corrupted. Started trying to make guards and warriors, servants. Beauty can’t never compete with power.” His feathers quivered. “Destroy the results they don’t like. Can’t change ‘em back.”
“When we first questioned the disappearances, they denied knowing anything,” Wurragarr explained. “Then they insisted only criminals and maladroits were taken, or travelers who tried to break into the monastery and rob them. We stopped believing then- denials when our own young started disappearing.”
“Sham, all sham,” the galah insisted, “to cover their activities. We know them now for what they are. Been corrupted, yes they have. By the Dark Forces. Maybe too much testosterone. They use that word a lot now.”
Wurragarr indicated the anxious, determined faces gathered close. “Many of those here have lost children. They don’t even know if they’re still alive, or in their original form. But they want to find out. They have to find out.” The roo’s eyes were level with Buncan’s. “Human infants have also been taken.”
“Even if any o’ this piffle is for real,” said Squill challengingly, “what makes you think you can do anythin’ about it?”
Wurragarr’s tone didn’t change. “We will, or die trying.”
“Fair dinkum,” growled Bedarra, gripping his pike tightly.