CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE

Word quickly spread throughout Salamandastron of Matowick's impending arrival, along with rampant speculation as to the identity of his prisoner and the whereabouts of the other five Gawtrybe who'd left with him earlier that season. By the time Urthblood made his way down to the main entry hall, many of the Gawtrybe lined the walls and overlooking gallery, along with a number of curious mice and hedgehogs as well. All the captains were there too - Abellon, Tillamook and the recently-returned Mattoon, straying a bit in his rat-guarding responsibilities to hear for himself what Matowick had to say.

The badger did and said nothing to discourage such assembling, and if he might have wished for a more private setting in which to receive his squirrel captain, he gave no outward indication of such a desire. Perhaps he felt his soldierbeasts deserved the opportunity to be present, or perhaps he wanted them here, in anticipation of some event he preferred be widely witnessed. As always, his motives could only be guessed at as he stood impassively waiting in the center of the entry chamber.

And then a hush fell as a lone figure appeared in the gateway, backlit against the brighter daylight and the shimmering ocean. Matowick strode slowly and purposefully up into the mountain, his cadence making every step seem a labored effort. He glanced about in surprise at all his waiting comrades as his eyes adjusted, and his red-armored Lord as well.

Matowick was quite alone.

"Captain," Urthblood rumbled in mild concern, "where is your prisoner?"

"Outside, Lord. The gulls are watching her."

"Bring her in, please."

"I ... don't think I should, sir."

Urthblood showed visible surprise for a second time, hardly expecting his senior Gawtrybe commander to adopt such a contrary attitude. "Why not, Captain?"

"I don't think it's safe. I think it's best she not enter the mountain."

"Explain."

Matowick stepped right up to his master, lowering his voice. "Lord, wouldn't you care to debrief someplace more ... private? You may not want so many ears listening in to what I have to say."

"Salamandastron might be large, Captain, but not so large that secrets can be kept here for long. Speculation has already run rife surrounding your mission. Words spoken in secret now will only find their way out in due time. Better to dispel all inaccurate supposition and rumor, and be open about it. Now, please have the prisoner escorted in."

Matowick all but glared at Urthblood with sunken, haunted eyes. "Aren't you even going to ask what happened to the rest of my team?"

The badger paused in consideration, sensing the gravity of the question's intent, and the importance Matowick seemed to place upon it. "What happened to them, Captain?"

"They're dead. They're all dead." Matowick stepped closer to the Badger Lord, even as his tone grew more strident, tinged perhaps by the faintest edge of controlled hysteria. "And she made it happen. Brisson and Flaquer and Selen, brave and stout squirrels all, smashed and pulverized and smeared across the mountainside by a fall of boulders that unleashed itself at the very moment we were passing underneath. And later on, a perilous rock ledge that splintered and thrust up underpaw, just as we were traversing it, with such violence that Nixalis was all but launched into the abyss to his doom. His screams ... but the worst was Delk, who leaned out too far to gaze after Nixalis ... leaned out just a little too far, like a pup who simply didn't know any better ... and then he was gone too, without so much as a grunt of surprise." Matowick's cold gaze fixed upon Urthblood. "Gawtrybe do not simply lean out too far and lose their balance, and plummet to their deaths without a cry of alarm or protest. Not seasoned campaigners like Delk. That rat made it happen. She caused the very ground to rise up against us, made the rockface break loose to smash us down, enchanted Delk to act foolishly and pay with his life. She tried to kill us all ... and she very nearly succeeded."

Urthblood regarded Matowick with a level gaze, even as some of the creatures around them murmured in startled alarm, for as the Gawtrybe captain related his tale, his voice had risen in both volume and agitation, reaching many ears.

"I'm sure you are mistaken, Captain. These must have been coincidences, perhaps amplified to you as something more after all you'd been through."

"With all due respect, Lord," Matowick bit off, "you weren't there. You didn't feel ... the world twisting. Bending, changing around us. If we bring her in here, she'll bring the entire mountain down on our heads. It's a miracle I made it back her with her alive."

"No, Captain, it is no miracle. She is here because it was my will that she be brought here, and you acted as an extension of my will. She may have resisted, she may have fought in ways you were not fully prepared for, and she may have nearly persevered - but in the end my will was stronger than hers, my power greater. In hindsight, you could not have failed. All has happened as it was meant to."

"And yet five of my best squirrels are dead now ... "

"They died heroes, fulfilling their role in helping to remove from Mossflower a threat to all the lands. They will be duly honored and remembered for their service. In fact, we will hold a ceremony in their memory, perhaps tomorrow, committing their names to the rolls of those who have performed the greatest service to our cause. It is only fitting, after all. Although, I did warn you that you might expect resistance from unexpected directions in the course of carrying out this mission."

Matowick's tired eyes widened momentarily, then drooped again. "I ... we never expected anything like that, Lord. How were we supposed to meet such a threat? How was any mortal beast?"

"It is of no consequence now. You have discharged your responsibility, and your account leaves little doubt in my mind that you have delivered to me the creature I dispatched you to apprehend."

"Oh, she's the one, all right. My five dead tribesmates are testimony enough to that - as is the arrow that took Lady Mina through her side."

Urthblood showed renewed surprise at this remark. "Lady Mina? How does she fare? What happened?"

"She will recover, or at least that was the prognosis of the Abbey healers when we left. Mina tried to slay the rat you sent me to get, taking it upon herself to solve this problem of yours the Gawtrybe way. But fate broke her bow as she pulled taut the string, sending the shaft meant for her target spinning back upon her instead, piercing her abdomen. And knowing what I know now - after what I've seen - I know Latura made it happen. That rat controls fate itself."

"Not as much as I do. Latura - is that this rat's name?"

"Aye." Matowick paused. "Lord, I'm not sure she can be killed, if that be your intent. I might have tried it myself, but I'm certain I would have been frustrated in my attempts, just as Lady Mina was. I'm not certain anybeast can slay her."

"Then the moment has come to test this theory - and I will be the one to test it. And since you are reluctant to usher her into the mountain, we will do this outside. Come, and let us put an end to this once and for all - one way or the other."

00000000000

"Look at this creature, Captain, and tell me what you see."

Urthblood and Latura stood regarding each other under the open seaside sky, only a pace or two separating them across the sands. Matowick held his place near his master's side, while farther back encircling the scene lingered Abellon, Tillamook, Mattoon and any number of the mountain's defenders who'd followed their Lord and captains out onto the shore to have a look at this suddenly-legendary rat for themselves. After catching bits and snatches of what Matowick had told Urthblood inside, all were most curious to see what this turn of events portended, and how this confrontation between powerfully prophetic beasts would play out.

Matowick looked to Urthblood in puzzlement. "Why do you ask this, Lord? She stands right before you. You can see her quite plainly for yourself."

"I want to hear an assessment of how she appears to others. Describe her please, as she strikes your eyes, and leave out no detail."

"Very well." Matowick turned his assessing gaze fully on Latura. "Not much to be said for this one, at least not on the outside. Short and slight, more gangly than anything, with tawny fur not quite lustrous enough to bear a healthy sheen, and a tendency to lie up and stick out in a most unkempt fashion. Eyes too small and beady to come across as fully intelligent, front teeth too large for the mouth, ears slightly mismatched, although I couldn't exactly say how, tail scraggly even by rat standards, and overlarge footpaws that are constantly trying to trip over each other. She's wearing the male-style tunic of her companion, from when we made them switch garments to try to throw off the Redwallers pursuing us. Her whiskers seem too thin and tenuous to be much good for anything, and her posture is as perpetually slumped as any shambling vermin's could be. All in all, a sorry physical specimen, for any species."

"Hey, I'm standin' right here!" Latura protested, then returned her fascinated gaze to Urthblood.

The badger winced at the keening, sucking sound that whined inside his ears when Latura spoke. "Thank you, Captain."

Everybeast stood at the ready, waiting for what would come next. Even Whiskersalt and Wakenfern and Ramjohn and Chobor had made their way down from the dining hall upon word of this event, looking on from the shelter of the main entryway above. The collective nervous anticipation grew as the moments stretched out, with the two prophetic antagonists simply standing and staring at each other in silence.

Urthblood saw nothing of what Matowick had described. His gaze bore into his prey with all the otherworldly insight he could summon, and yet he saw no more now that he'd ever been able to see in all those seasons of questing after the Point. The dark and mysterious shadow haunting his spectral vision for so long had at last been brought before him, yet it stubbornly, impossibly remained just that - a shadow, featureless and blank. No eyes, no mouth, no fur, no face - just a void in the space of the world, an impenetrable and unrevealing silhouette in the shape of a rat, but not a real creature. The latent power within this beast utterly veiled her from his sight, hiding her from his perceptions even though she stood directly before him. The phantom threat from his prescient dreams persisted as a phantom, black and unyielding.

The long glass had not been malfunctioning up on the mountainside terrace. He could not see her because she would not let herself be seen.

He dreaded to reach out to try to touch her, to make her presence reality through tactile means as visual means could not. The sight of her now - or rather the lack thereof - unnerved Urthblood more than he was prepared to admit. In all his worldly wanderings and experiences, and in all his probings into the realms beyond the physical, he'd never encountered anything to suggest that such a phenomenon might exist. And, as he stood there feeling his adversary dissecting him with a gaze he could not see, for the first time in many seasons a tiny gnawing pang of fear asserted itself inside him - and he knew that when he finally did make contact with his long-sought prize, it would not be with his paw, but with his steel.

From where Latura stood, staring at Urthblood with a rapt fascination he could sense but not see, she beheld nothing else but what lay inside him. All traces of the red from her dire, repeated warnings were vanished now; she saw naught of the burnished crimson armor, nor of the stripe-furred creature encased within. Her vision revealed to her only white - multifaceted, translucent white. Once, at the Abbey, she'd seen an old crystal serving bowl, fancier than any such vessel in her old village, its surface corrugated with diamond ridges and coruscated patterns, and now, trapped in this moment, she could think of Urthblood as nothing more than a massive, badger-shaped crystal artifact, lacking any solid surface which might conceal its interior, consisting entirely of myriad canted prism windows opening onto what lay at the crux of this construct.

And at the center of that indefinite figure raged the vortex, sucking in currents of fate and chance and possibility, visible to her as rushing white streams whipping all about them. Some were incoming, drawn into the depths of the badgervoid by the irresistible pull of the vacuum centered there, while others spewed out into the world again with frightful force. But those coming out were not the same as when they went in; somehow they'd been changed, altered, perverted by their passage through this dynamo of destiny. These streams of happenstance, these currents of what was meant to be, emerged bent to the will of the being who corralled them, and they would never be the same again.

Regarding this spectacle that only she could see, this storm of distorted cause and effect twisting and writhing and soundlessly thundering around them, she saw that the only reason any of this could be was because there was nothing there. Deep down, at the very heart, lay only an appalling nothingness, which drew history into its folds like a magnet, subverting and distorting it to its will. Of that there was plenty - willpower, intent, dark design - but aside from that, where should have dwelt the essence that made a beast a beast, of that there was no trace.

Pondering this discovery in her own feeble way, faced with this revelation, Latura absently muttered the only word she could think of to voice what she beheld.

"Empty ... "

Except that this time, she meant it in a far more literal sense than when she'd ever referred to Mathurin and Turma by that name.

Urthblood heard not this lowly-uttered word of hers, no more than he heard anything she said - just more of the keening knife edge across his awareness that made him flinch and bristle his fur like claws against slate. Deciding to head this off - in the most literal manner possible - before this taunting phantasm could discomfit him further, his paw went to his sword hilt. "It is time to end this."

And then something happened that nobeast looking on would be able to account for, either then or in seasons to come. As Urthblood's blade left its scabbard, its tip caught against the lip of the sheath and rendered his brandishing of the weapon uncharacteristically awkward. Perhaps it was rustiness, from not having drawn his sword in battle since facing his brother, and maybe it was lack of practice using his left paw for such a maneuver; maybe it was the faceless, dimensionless facade of the not-quite-creature before him that caused him to misjudge distances, or perhaps that same featureless visage had so unnerved him that he grew clumsy. Whatever the reasons, when he drew his blade and held it up before him, the haphazard arc of its swing brought its razor-keen tip into glancing contact with Latura's nose, tracing the faintest hairline of blood there as it just barely broke the tender skin.

Latura stepped back, clutching her snout. "Ooo! 'ee sliced me!"

This time, Urthblood paid no heed to the cringe-inducing noise of her speech, for as the first vestige of Latura's blood tainted the deadly steel, a lightning bolt of warning energy seemed to flash up the blade, through the hilt and into his paw, shocking and numbing him, blasting through his every nerve until he felt everybeast around him must surely see the destructive power pouring forth from him.

Staggering backward, he released his grip on the sword, which thudded into the sand with a muted thump.

"My Lord!" Matowick cried out in alarm. "What is it? Has she hurt you?"

Urthblood stood stunned, shaking his head sideways to try to rid it of the lingering cascade of caution that had threatened to momentarily rob him of his senses. He shuddered, then realized the shudder did not cease at a single chilled convulsion. He was shaking; he was shaken.

Pointing his paw at the black rat shape, he roared, "Bind that abomination! Guard her, watch her, hold her fast! Make sure she goes nowhere, and that nobeast approaches her once restrained!"

His thoughts in disarray, he spun and stormed back up into the mountain, his sword still lying in the sand behind him, forgotten.

00000000000

Matowick found Urthblood up in the forge room, alone - and if the badger wasn't fuming, it was as close to it as the Gawtrybe captain could ever recall seeing.

The utilitarian chamber itself lay dark and silent, as it did so often these days; with only one paw, even a master of the craft such as Urthblood found working and shaping hot steel a formidable challenge, and with his army already outfitted with all the weaponry they'd likely need for their next several campaigns, the furnaces here mostly sat cold and unstoked in recent seasons.

Now Urthblood paced up and down between oven and anvil and betwixt baskets and bundles of finished but undistributed armaments, his manner clearly betraying his inner turmoil. Matowick, as the first and so far only officer to successfully seek out his badger master - and as the one who'd delivered to Salamandastron the creature responsible for causing the Lord of the Mountain such consternation - felt compelled to inquire as to what was going on.

"My Lord, what happened out there? Are you all right?"

"A trap," the badger barked, his tone a far cry from its usual smooth rumble. "It was all a trap. All these seasons ... "

"A trap? Set by who?"

"By fate, Captain. No mortal beast or cabal could have designed such a trial for me. The power contained within that rat ... never would I have believed such a thing possible. I owe you an apology; I see now that she is indeed capable of all you have attributed to her, and more. You were right that she is to blame for all the calamities which befell your expedition, because fate was behind her. And yet ... such power ... "

Matowick swallowed, uncertain of the prudence of voicing his next thought. "More powerful than ... you, Lord?"

Urthblood ceased his distracted pacing and looked to Matowick, and if anything, this line of inquiry actually seemed to calm him. "No. Not MORE powerful. A different kind of power, to be sure, perhaps equal to mine in its own way, but directed to other aims and purposes. More latent and less controlled than mine, as by its very nature it must be. I always foresaw that this creature held within it the potential to deliver my downfall and doom, but never did I imagine it would be in such a literal sense. If destiny herself can be culpable of treachery, then that rat outside represents a level of treachery not even Tratton himself could match."

"I ... don't understand, Lord. Do we now have her at our mercy, or does she have us at hers? Is she still a threat, or no?"

Urthblood slowly shook his head, his usual composed confidence returning to him more with each passing moment. "No. This danger is past."

"Then she can be slain now, and put to rest once and for all?"

"No, Captain. That is the very trap which nearly ensnared me. She cannot be slain. And she must not be slain."

Matowick's confusion only deepened. "Then ... what ... I don't ... "

"When the tip of my sword drew her blood just now, even though only the most miniscule trace of her inner power tainted my steel, I was warned too fully and too well of what would happen were I to carry on as I'd intended. Even as fate laid this trap for me, it also favored me with a glimpse of how that trap must spring, for me to heed or ignore at my peril. As it was, circumstances left me no way to ignore it. The power inside her, Captain ... even the tiniest taste of that power was enough to nearly knock me off my footpaws, and make me feel as if my mortal shell was bursting. Had I plunged my blade deep into her in a blind attempt to rid the lands of her, ignorant and unsuspecting of the forces such an act would unleash, it would have destroyed me, utterly and totally."

Matowick stood spellbound by this revelation, slack-jawed and incapable of speech.

"This was the danger she posed to me ... and I now believe the only danger. The trap was a crafty one, the test fiendishly ingenious. For seasons I was shown that a rat could undo all my works, but never did my far and future sight reveal or even hint that attempting to destroy that threat would be the very thing that could unleash my own destruction. How was I to know? How could I have? Never did I suspect destiny herself might scheme and plot against me so. It was a near thing, Captain - a very near thing indeed. Were it not for an accident of my wrist, we might all stand upon the shores of utter ruin right now."

Urthblood's gaze upon the squirrel grew more intense. "All of which leaves us with one very salient question: If the entire purpose of her existence was to bring her to this moment and to this test, why then did fate so imbue in her such astounding power to resist my will? The power to deliver so many of her fellow rats into an inviolate sanctuary in opposition to my greater aims ... the power to call down boulders from the mountain face and shatter the rock underpaw to annihilate nearly your entire expedition ... the power to hide herself from me during seasons of search, and remain hidden from my sight even when ... " Here Urthblood paused, as if reluctant to share what he was about to say, even to one of his most trusted confidants. Instead, he took one deliberate step toward Matowick. "Tell me again, just how did you manage to extract her from Redwall so easily? I've yet to hear the full details of that operation."

"E-easy?!" Matowick sputtered. "There was nothing easy about it, Lord! It nearly killed us all, and cost you many of your gulls too - including Captain Scarbatta."

"Yes, getting her here was costly indeed, I concede. But I am not talking about that now. I speak of the actual extraction - getting her out of the Abbey itself. You were well clear before anybeast gave chase; this I know from my aerial scouts. How did you get her outside the walls and into the Plains?"

Matowick screwed up his features, as if trying to dredge up some dim and far-distant memory. "There was a distraction we took advantage of. Some of the Abbey youngsters were misbehaving, occupying the attention of all the adult beasts. That cleared the way for us to snatch our target."

"Well, that was certainly convenient. One might almost say lucky. There is just one problem with that. Think of that rat standing outside on the shore right now. Think of all she has done, all she has caused ... and then tell me you believe luck had any part at all in these events."

Matowick worked his jaw silently for several moments. "I ... I'm not sure how you want me to respond to that, Lord. But, you've just finished telling me she was a trap designed by fate to ensnare you. If so, then how could she have fulfilled that destiny unless she was brought before you? Perhaps fate determined she was to come with us ... just as you say you saw my squad as the ones to do this ... "

"And yet, she fought me so. Could anybeast at Redwall have assisted you with your escape? Lady Mina, perhaps?"

The squirrel shook his head. "No, I don't see how. She was up in the Infirmary recovering from the wound to her side, and no Abbeybeast would have lifted a paw to aid us. We Gawtrybe were practically viewed as the enemy there, even before we made off with Latura and her fellow villager."

"Ah yes. About that. Who exactly is this second rat you captured? Why did you see fit to bring him along as well? What is his significance?"

"None, Lord. He's a nothing, a nobeast. He proved some minor worth at misleading our pursuers, if only for a little while, but other than that ... He wasn't even supposed to be there ... except that he was. He's gotta go to sea."

"Go to sea? What does that mean?"

"Nothing. It's just what Latura kept saying - that he had to go to sea. He saw her go outside the Abbey walls in all the confusion, and followed after her, no doubt to try and get her to go back inside."

"She went outside? On her own? You did not force her out under custody? What made her do such a thing?"

"I ... don't know."

"You never thought to ask her?"

"She's ... not the most coherent of beasts, Lord. Lady Mina at first refused to believe she could be the rat we sought at all. She displays the intellect and temperament of a youngbeast - and not a very swift one at that."

"You think this misbehavior you spoke of by the Abbey youngsters might have forced her outside for some reason?"

"It's ... possible. There was so much going on, all over and all at once, I really could not say for certain. But when I saw the two of them leave the Abbey, I alerted my team and we went out after them. Followed them into the woods, found they'd already been stopped by some of Captain Custis's squirrels, and that's where we took them into our custody."

"That still doesn't explain why you brought the male along with you."

"We had to bring him along to keep him from raising the alarm. We really had no choice."

"You could have just slain him."

"No, Lord. He had to go to sea."

Something about Matowick's automatic, mantra-like tone struck the badger. "Captain, is there something you're not telling me?"

"I can't imagine what it would be. Everything happened just as I have reported. If the rest of my squad were here, they would tell you the same."

"But they aren't, are they? Another convenience, if something is meant to remain hidden from me." Urthblood stalked right up to Matowick and, to the squirrel's startlement, took the Gawtrybe's chin in his massive left paw and tilted it up so that the two of them locked gazes. Matowick had seen his master perform this ritual many times before - but only with beasts of a more verminous and questionable nature, to divine whether they were worthy of trust, or to be condemned to the blade as hopelessly irredeemable. Never did Matowick imagine he might find himself subjected to one of these scrutinizing, soul-plumbing examinations.

Urthblood's gaze gave away little, and his voice remained clinically impassive. "Something has been ... you have been altered, Captain."

"Al-altered?" Matowick stammered as Urthblood released him.

"Your memory. All is not as it should be. Something ... veiled ... misdirected ... "

"Who could have done such a thing?!"

"It was not my work. And I can think of only one other who might be capable of such a feat. Perhaps it is hardly surprising, considering how much time you spent in her company. It could be purely an unintended proximity effect, with no purpose behind it. Still, it is curious that you should arrive in this state, with so many gaps and peculiarities in your account of events. It almost seems too coincidental to credit."

Matowick found himself shaking, just as Urthblood had shaken down on the shore after uncovering Latura's true nature and purpose. His memory, gone? Or, more to the point, selectively edited, to hide who-knew-what from both himself and his Lord? He felt more deeply violated than if he'd been physically assaulted; if he could not trust his own recollections - if he could not be sure he knew what he thought he knew - it was like having the rug of his whole life pulled out from under him.

"I do not think you have been turned against me, on some secret, subliminal level," Urthblood rumbled on in his coldly analytical tone. "I would surely sense anything that profound. No, this is more subtle - a veiled fact, a tweak of a specific memory. I cannot glimpse or surmise what that memory may have been, but if it has not subverted you, and it has not prevented you from fulfilling your mission to bring my enemy to me, then perhaps it is not worthy of undue concern after all. Still, it will warrant further pondering, and consideration."

Matowick felt a new anger toward Latura surging up inside him. It was bad enough that she'd dared to pose a challenge to Lord Urthblood, and even worse that her willful wild talents had cost the lives of his cherished comrades. But now, to hear that she might have reached into his very mind and hidden some small part of his life from him - that was beyond the pale. Even fated, prophetic beasts did not do that to their fellow creatures ... unless they were purely, unmitigatedly evil.

"So, what are we to do now, Lord? I mean, if you had me bring her here to be slain, and now you dare not slay her ... "

"Yes, it does pose a rather confounding paradox, does it not? A beast who perhaps cannot be slain by any ordinary soul, but who holds disaster for the one creature who can. A uniquely effective survival mechanism fate has bestowed upon her - now that we know to abide by it."

"Yes, but, what do we do with her? She can't stay here - there's too much trouble she could cause us, too many things that could go wrong. Do we send her back to Redwall?"

"To Redwall? Why would you suggest such a thing, Captain?"

"It's where she came from, and she seemed happy there. Maybe if she's happy, she won't cause anybeast any more trouble. And if she does, let the Redwallers deal with it, not us."

"She did not come from Redwall, but from someplace much, much farther away than that."

"Fine. Let's send her there then. As long as it's not here, at Salamandastron."

"But that would violate the Accord, Captain."

Matowick stared long and hard at Urthblood, the badger's words slowly registering. "Lord ... you can't mean ... "

"The provisions of the peace treaty with Terramort - provisions included in the agreement at my own insistence - specifically promise Tratton all the rats of the lands in exchange for releasing his woodlander slaves. She is a rat. She is of the lands, or at least the physical part of her is. Our course could not be clearer. If she is not to die here, then my paw is tied. She must be given over to the custody of the searats, in accordance with the very law I helped write. Ideally, to those searats tied up at our pier outside at this very moment."

"But ... we can't give her to Tratton!"

"The Accord is the Accord."

"But ... a creature who can't be killed ... who can do the things she can ... who holds such power ... and to let Tratton have that kind of weapon ... "

"Not a weapon," Urthblood corrected, sounding certain of himself beyond argument. "Her powers are solely her own, not to be marshalled, controlled or exploited by anybeast outside her. We are merely keeping up our end of the agreement between us and Tratton. He will have no better idea what to do with her than I do ... and no better luck using her for his own ends than I would."