scraped away. “I never go anywhere without them. This won’t lake long. Hmm, Verdauga, he was mentioned in
Abbess Ger-maine’s journal, some sort of wildcat who ruled Mossflower before Martin the Warrior arrived. There,
I’ve got it!”
Foremole Diggum, who was last on the ladder, grunted impatiently. “Ho, gudd for ee, marm. Can us’n’s git down
thurr naow? Oi’m not gurtly pleased ’angin”round up yurr!”
It was a long and arduous descent. When they touched ground at the pit bottom, Friar Butty peered upward to the
platform. It looked very small and far off.
“Phew!” he said, nodding in admiration. “Just think, Skipper dove from up there, what a brave an’ darin’ beast! I
think if I tried it I’d prob’ly die of fright halfway down.”
Shad tapped his tail against the mud-coated rocks. “Since the waters dried up, mate, you’d die fer sure if you
landed ’ere. Right, let’s git the lay o’ the land.”
He lit another lantern and they moved gingerly on the slippery stones of the dried streambed, staring at tiieir
surroundings. It was little more than a stone chamber, with a gaping hole at eye level where the water had flowed in
from the right, and another hole beneath their paws to the left, where the stream had exited downward.
Tansy found a dry rock and sat down. “It’s very smelly and cold. We’d best watch we don’t slip and fall down that
hole—goodness knows where we’d end up. Well, anyone got some bright ideas? This place looks like a dead end.”
Craklyn studied the verse she had copied, then took a careful look around. She pointed to a spot not far above their
heads. “Look there, up to the left. There’s a hole in the wall, but it’s blocked by rubble and old timbers. I think that
was where the stairs finished originally. We must be standing below the old ground level now, where the water carved
the floor away.”
Shad climbed back up the ladder, swinging it inward until he could reach the hole in the side of the wall. He
secured the rope ladder to a splintered wood beam that stuck out. “Aye, yore right, marm, this is where the last stair
was. I think we might’ve found a passage ’ere. Stand clear while I try an’ unblock it.”
Huddling beneath an overhang at the cave’s far side, they watched rock, timber, and masonry pouring from the
hole as the husky otter cleared away the debris. It was not long before he called down to them, “Haharr, ’tis a passage
sure enough—dry, too. C’mon up, mateys!”
One by one Shad helped them from the rope ladder into the passage. Foremole discovered a shattered pine beam
and, using a dash of lantern oil, soon had a fire burning cheerily.
“Thurr ee go. Oi thinks us’n’s be ’avin’ a warm an’ summ vitties afore us do ought else, bo urr!”
Abbess Tansy wanned her paws gratefully. “What would we do without a good and sensible Foremole?”
Friar Butty unpacked a latticed fruit tart, some nutbread, and a flask of elderberry wine, which he set by the fire to
warm. As the friends ate they discussed the verse that Craklyn had copied.
“So,” said Tansy, “it wasn’t an idle sentry who carved those words, it was the Lord of the castle himself. But why
put it there in plain view?”
Craklyn explained what she had seen. “It wasn’t exactly in plain view, though. I noticed some spike holes in the
stone; there must have been a wall hanging or a curtain hiding the verse. Maybe Verdauga was getting old and he
carved it there to remind himself.”
Foremole sliced the tart evenly, shaking his head. “Hurr, ’tis a gurt puzzlement tho’, marm. ‘Roight is ee left
daown thurr,’ wot do that mean?”
“I know it sounds odd, but it’s not really. Creatures who hide something and write about it usually try to trick
others by arranging the words so they sound strange. ‘Right is the left down there’ means that the left passage is the
right one to take. I could say that two ways; either the left is the right one to take, or as Verdauga put it, right is the
left to take. See?”
Butty poured out small amounts of the warm wine for them. “I’m with you, miz Craklyn, ’tis right to take the left
passage, an’ that’s the one we’re in now, lucky enough. I think I’ve got the next two lines as well.
‘Every pace you must count,
At ten times paws amount.’
Everybeast has four paws, so add ten to that an’ it makes fourteen paces we must count.”
A smile hovered on the Recorder’s lips as she challenged the Friar. “Is that right? Go on then, young Butty, take
the lantern and walk fourteen paces down this passage. Tell us what you find.”
The young squirrel marched off, counting precisely. He was lost to sight at the count of eight, where the passage
took a bend. Shortly he returned to sit by the fire, scratching his chin. “Hmph! Wasn’t a thing there, nothin’ except
stone walls!”
Craklyn shook a paw at him in mock severity. “That’s because your arithmetic was wrong, Friar. Work it out
properly now. You have four paws, and the line says ‘Ten times paws amount.’ Times!”
The answer dawned upon Butty suddenly. “Of course, ten times four is forty—it means take forty paces!”
Tansy passed him a slice of tart. “Well done, sir, but let’s have our meal, then we’ll all go and count it out
together.”
Beyond the turn a long passage stretched before them, dark and gloomy, layered with the dust of untold ages. So
intense was the silence that they paced on tip-paws, whispering out the count. Tansy looked left and right at the
forbidding bare stone walls and the worn paved floor. What sort of creatures had walked them in the distant past? How
long had it been since a living beast set paw down here?
“Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty!”
“Well wallop me rudder, look at this, messmates!”
A great shuttered window stood before them, broad and high, its lintel, sill, and corbels intricately carved with
sinister designs. Shad unlatched the shutters, announcing jokingly, “Wonderful view o’ Mossflower countryside from
’ere. Take a look!”
Cobwebs parted as Shad drew back the creaking shutters, revealing the entire frame, packed solid with stone and
dark earth. He shut them again and pushed the rusty latch into place.
“Too far down even for roots or worms to travel. Question is, wot are we supposed t’look for now?”
Craklyn repeated the fifth and sixth lines of the verse:
“See where a deathbird flies,
Under the hunter’s eyes.”
Tansy shuddered as she held up the lantern to inspect the sil!. “These carvings are skillfully done, but they’re
horrible. See here, there’s a snake swallowing a little mouse, and here, two rats are cutting up a skylark with curved
knives. Everywhere you look there’s cruelty and murder being done. No wonder Martin and his friends fought so hard
against the vermin who lived here. But where’s the deathbird and the hunter?”
Piece by piece they went over the grisly scenes until Shad, being the tallest, stood on the sill and held up the
lantern to view the lintel overhead.
“Is this wot yore lookin’ for, marm?”
He was pointing to a picture of a raven. The big black bird was trying to fly away, but it was trapped by a leaping
wildcat that had bitten deep into the raven’s back.
Craklyn clenched her paws tightly, fascinated yet repulsed by the dreadful image. “Yes, that’s it, Shad! The wildcat
is the hunter, and the raven has long been known as the deathbird for the way that it feasts upon carcasses of dead
creatures. I’m sure that is it!”
They sat upon the windowsill, looking at one another in the flickering lamplight. Tansy read out the final two lines: