Duncton Quest (109 page)

No surprise will it be that since his separation from Tryfan and Spindle, he had found out many strange and curious things about Whern. Among them was the discovery such a mole
would
make, that the secret of route-finding through Whern was to know the way the waters ran. Made by water, dominated by water, follow water, have no fear of water: that was the way to conquer Whern.

Far and wide had Mayweed roamed, watching, listening, learning. Never once suspected. Missing, presumed dead, by all but Tryfan and Spindle. Now he came, by ways diverse and strange, to the Fall itself, down through fissures at its western end, and heard the sighing echoes of Henbane’s ecstasy and Tryfan’s pleasure. Heard them and knew they marked a moment of change, though for what end he could not guess but that it made him afraid and purposeful.

As for Boswell, Mayweed already knew he was somewhere in the Fall, that much he had learnt from listening. He knew too that Rune was hidden there as well, very old he believed, but still a mole to avoid.

So as dawn rose, and the mating of Henbane and Tryfan began to ail, Mayweed crept among the shadows of the Fall searching for an old White Mole.

What he found he could never have expected, not in a million years of imagining.

There was Boswell, even more ancient than Mayweed had expected, with, of all things, a fat mole whose flanks were so plump that they struggled with each other when he moved; a mole with the eyes of a lost pup and a body so useless that it deserved to die. This he saw before he made himself known.

He sensed other moles about and, moving on up the chasm towards where he heard a waterfall driving down from the surface above, even as grey light advanced across that dreadful place, he saw them: sideem. Lurking, waiting, preparing.

“Boswell and that Bailey have talked all night,” said one.

“Some have done more than talk,” said another. “Filthy and vile are those who stray from the Word.”

“Silence,” ordered a third, a female, her voice severe yet not quite cold. She Mayweed could not see.

“I shall go and get Bailey now,” she said, “and bring him here, for Henbane would see him.”

“May the Word have put sense into him,” said another. More chill laughter of a kind Mayweed had got used to in his long reconnaissance of Whern’s tunnels.

Hearing the name Bailey, Mayweed was naturally astonished since the only other mole he had ever known so named was Starling’s brother. But
he
had been a pup, innocent, young, eager with a pup’s eyes....

A pup’s eyes! Mayweed’s own eyes widened in alarm, and he felt then the power of the Stone, and the ways it saw its task come to pass. Bailey? That obese mole – Bailey? Did Mayweed then run back to reach them quickly? Not he. Mayweed was a route-finder, with a route-finder’s habits and instincts, and he turned quickly past the group of sideem and went to the great stream’s fall and stared at its deep, surging pool, and on to the sucking roaring disappearance of its treacherous flow beneath an overhang of rock into the unknown deeps below.

Then he crept back, past the sideem, and heard them arguing with the only female among them saying it was their duty to come with her, for this Bailey might give her trouble and Henbane would want to see him, and getting him back up the steps to her chambers was going to be a major task since he was so fat he could hardly move four steps without a pause.

So they all set off as Mayweed, unseen by them, ducked away and took another route and went now as fast as he could and made his plan as he went. Yes, yes! But Stone help them all!

So he burst in upon the strange conversation between Boswell and Bailey, who looked at him in blank astonishment.

“Decrepit and crumbling Sir, White Mole of Uffington, and mole of great gravity, Bailey. Time is short and words are long!”

“But...” began Bailey, his eyes popping out of his plump head as he saw a mole he knew and loved and had never thought to see again.

Mayweed raised a paw.

“No buts, overweight Sir, no doubts. Listen and follow. Sideem come. Sideem will kill. Boswell to be saved. Humble me called Mayweed has a plan of startling complexity which he has not time or inclination to explain. Unbothered Boswell, will you trust me?”

Boswell smiled.

“I will, Mayweed, and so will this one here despite his protests. Now tell us what to do for we have both grown impatient with waiting to leave this place.”

“Sirs both, follow, follow
now,
and pray.”

“We will,” laughed Boswell like a pup, and doing something most ungentle for a White Mole, which was to talon-thrust poor Bailey in the rump to start him moving.

Mayweed led them along the cliffs of the chasm, and even as they left Boswell’s clearing they heard the sideem arrive, exclaim, cry out to each other, and begin to snout about. High up on that chasm’s walls the first light of the morning’s sun stuck, and the shadows weakened, and Mayweed knew their cover would soon be gone.

But before that the sideem might catch up with them, because the ground was rough with scree and, though limping Boswell managed well enough, poor Bailey was almost unable to get over some of them, and between others he got struck.

“Is it far?” he panted.

“It is a very long way indeed, staggeringly obese Bailey, so Mayweed suggests you concentrate your energies on moving not talking.”

There was silence behind them for a time as they struggled along, getting nearer and nearer to the great raging pool. Then they heard a shout go echoing up among the chasm’s walls and the drumming of paws coming up behind them.

“Struggling Sirs,” entreated Mayweed, looking as patiently as he could at the moles he was trying to rescue as they did their best to clamber over increasingly slippery and awkward rocks and came within range of the waterfall’s spray and neared the pool, “do your best!”

The sounds of the shouts of the chasing sideem, and the sudden appearance of other sideem at the entrance to the tunnel by which Bailey had come down to the chasm, who began to give chase as well, spurred Boswell and Bailey on to the pool’s edge.

It had no lip, but rather an ominous sinking past a few peat-stained boulders into black water, in which were the yellow, surgings of fierce currents and flows.

“Where do we go now?” asked Bailey, reasonably enough, eyeing the approaching sideem with fear and distaste, and the pool with horror.

“Sirs, we do what moles must always do if they are to progress in life! We take a leap into the unknown!”

“In
there
? said Bailey in disbelief.

Mayweed nodded.

“But we’ll drown!” said Bailey.

“Humble Mayweed takes comfort from this undeniable fact. If the oldest mole in moledom, and the fattest, survive submersion in this pool then it seems likely that he himself, pathetic though he is, will do so too!”

With that, and as the nearest sideem negotiated the final few boulders towards them, Mayweed pushed protesting Bailey into the water, where he struggled briefly until the current caught him, turned him, began to suck him down. His paws reached vainly for the receding sky above, he let out a gulping corpulent scream and vanished from sight.

Boswell, his faith in Mayweed complete, entered with more grace, and was gone in a flash, his white fur turning grey and then his form quite lost in the swirl of currents as he was dragged rapidly underwater towards the lowering overhang of cliff beneath which the waters disappeared.

Which left Mayweed alone at the pool’s edge, to take one last look back at their pursuers. A look which was as brief as the blink of an eye, and yet which took in a sight he had waited all his adult life to see.

As he stared at the sideem reaching out for him, he forgot his own natural fears of the pool he was about to dive into and remembered, of all things, a tunnel in the Wen a long time before, and a meeting with Tryfan, and a conversation about whether he would ever mate, during which Mayweed had said, “I have not the precise female in mind... but when I meet her I shall know!”

There, in the chasm with two moles lost in the pool behind him, and sideem all but taking him, Mayweed knew. For behind the group of male sideem was the single female whose voice he had heard earlier. Sun shafted down at that auspicious moment and struck a sheening light into that female’s grey fur, and her eyes stared at the extraordinary mole who had paused on the brink of death, or eternal torture in the Sinks. So Sleekit saw Mayweed.

A mole who stared at her with the brightest and most ironic eyes she had ever seen. A mole who seemed oblivious of all the dangers about him in that chasmed place. A mole who, to her astonishment, raised a paw and cried out a commanding, “Silly sideem,
stop
!” And gave himself the brief space to say with a kind of exaltation to his voice, as he gazed into her eyes, “Nonplussed Madam, Mayweed, who is me, will come back for you from death itself!”

With which he turned, and as boldly and heroically as he could manage, dived into the pool and was sucked out of sight to the depths below.

As the first rays of sun entered that chamber where Tryfan had spent the night with Henbane, and even as he woke and understood the danger he had put himself in, Henbane disentwined her limbs from his, and said. “You must leave, Tryfan of Duncton,
now
.”

Whether or not she meant him to be safe and to help him escape, he never knew, though he would have liked to think it was so. It would have made easier the knowledge that he had mated in the course of that strange night just passed, with the Stone’s greatest scourge.

But it was all too late. The sun came in, and there crouched in its rays watching them with contempt and dislike was the mole Tryfan had so long feared he might one day meet.

His eyes were black, his features thin with age, his fur glossy but dry, his talons curved and clean. Behind him ranged moles Tryfan knew must be sideem, but they were older than any other he had seen. Older and senior, all slim, all elegantly cruel of feature, all powerful in that way that engenders surprise and fear when it is seen in a mole who should have reached an age of relaxation. A strength preserved for arid things.

“My name is Rune,” said Rune. “And you are Bracken’s son.”

Tryfan felt then the fear of death and knew he faced it there.

“I am,” he said.

“Your father nearly had the strength to kill me, but he failed. I have never forgotten that he tried. Your mother I desired, and but for Bracken that might have been. So I have reason enough to kill you. Now you come to Whern, welcomed, unharmed, and you ravage Henbane here. That is reason enough to kill you in another way.”

Despite the fear he felt, and the helplessness, for the sideem closed in all about him and he had no way to go, Tryfan even then thought of another mole.

“Spindle has harmed nomole, nor will he. Let him at least be free. You have myself and Boswell, you....”

Rune raised his left paw slightly. His face, close to, was lined, even frail, but there burned out of his eyes a black hatred and contempt for life and normal living.

“He shall not be harmed,” said Rune, “not physically, just as you will not die. My duty is to find due punishment. You came here alive, and your weak followers must know you left here alive, as they must learn what you did here with Henbane. So very well.” He looked at Henbane briefly, and his thin pale tongue glanced across his mouth and then was gone. “I believe your followers will feel you were deserving of just punishment, Tryfan.”