Duncton Quest (4 page)

“But on
scribemole
?” wondered Tryfan.

“Well...” hesitated Boswell, staring again at the bodies and then out over the vale of Uffington and north beyond it. “There are few records, but in the northern reaches of moledom, where the ground rises to impassable wormless moors, others live who are not believers in the Stone.”

“Grike moles, giants!” said Tryfan. “Such as my mother told me stories of Stoneless moles,”

“Aye, some call them grikes,” said Boswell. “But among themselves they use another name.”

“Which is?” asked Tryfan impatiently.

“They are moles of the Word,” said Boswell looking bleakly at the snouted moles. “This is punishment by the Word.”

Tryfan was aghast, for all that he had heard moles say of the Word was hopeful and promising. Not like this. Then he felt stricken with awe, and the sense of what his task might be became clearer. He said nothing but went closer to Boswell.

Boswell seemed unaware of his disquiet, but continued his account of snouting. “We know that these grikes punished visiting scribemoles with snouting. Of that, sadly, there are records through the ages. No southern mole has been there for many tens of years, more than a century perhaps, for the reign of plagues has been long and has weakened moles as it weakened other creatures, and the scribemoles had enough to do in the regions of the Seven Systems. But I cannot be sure. This may be an accident of some kind to do with the wind, it may be twofoots rather than mole. But it is ominous, and makes me worry even more at the sense of trouble I feel about Uffington.”

“They have been there a long time,” said Tryfan eventually.

“Nearly a full cycle of seasons, certainly long before Longest Night.” Boswell’s voice was cold now, assessing the evidence. His tears were gone.

“These bodies have dried in strong sun, such as we had soon after we left Duncton Wood. That, followed by the freezing weather for so long, has helped preserve them.”

“Why did owls not take them?”

“The power of scribemoles is great and fearful to other creatures, even hunting owls. How else have scribemoles survived their traditional journeys to the Seven Systems and beyond?”

Boswell turned to the killing wire and raised a taloned paw and began to chant.

What is their death, oh stone?

Death of toil and of repentance,

Death of joy and of peace,

Death of grace and of forgiveness,

Death of hope and of despair.

Grant them what there is in death oh Stone:

Silence.

As he spoke this last solitary word the sound of the wind in the wire seemed to die, and from off to the east came a different sound, deeper and reverberant. To them it came in a deep note, and then again, and then once more. It was the haunting sound of the Blowing Stone.

“May they know the Silence of the Stone,” said Tryfan softly.

“May it be so,” concluded Boswell.

Even as he said it a storm of wind broke about them with a roar, and then across the face of the escarpment; it battered at the uprights of the fence, stressed the barbed wire between them, and swung the bodies of the moles ever more violently until first one and then the other fell off the barbs to break across the grass; the bones and fur lifted like feathers and were blown away with the wind. Tryfan watched this in wonder, though he had little doubt that it was quite in Boswell’s power to so provoke the wind and release the moles from their torment in death.

“Come,” cried Boswell above the noise of wind. “We will find an entrance to the Holy Burrows.”

“But what will we find there? And what of the greater trouble you spoke of?” shouted Tryfan back.

“We shall find whatever it is that the Stone wishes us to find,” replied Boswell.

Then they ran on uphill and even as the wind seemed to redouble its efforts to pull them from the steep side of the escarpment and hurl them to the vales far below they found a tunnel entrance and entered it, to make their escape into the silence of the most sacred burrows of moledom.

Chapter Two

The tunnel they found themselves in was narrow, but dry and made in the old way, its walls arching elegantly upward and its roof well finished. In consequence it had a pleasant airiness of sound, absorbing the wind-stresses from the grass above, though the whining of the barbed wire was carried down into the soil by the fence posts and was loud, its vibration unpleasant to the paws.

The floor was dusty and in places covered by black and withered grass roots which had tumbled from among the living ones lacing the ceiling and higher sides. These had a pleasing green-white colour which combined with the grey of the chalk to give the light in the tunnels the peaceful hallowed quality for which Uffington was famous.

But it was evident to both of them that nomole had passed this way for many a month, though vole and weasel had both left spoor at the entrance, probably while sheltering from a predator. In the tunnel itself the chalk dust was thick on the ground and in wall crevices, so that as they went along their coats became white with it.

“This is quite a place, Boswell,” whispered Tryfan as the old mole hurried on ahead. “It turns even a novitiate like me into a White Mole in no time at all. As for you, you’ll disappear altogether if you get any dustier!”

“That is my ultimate intention, as a matter of fact,” said Boswell, “to disappear altogether! But it is taking time; and so are you with idle chatter. Come! There’s a worm-rich stretch higher up and since I know it’s food you’re after we’ll stop there to feed and rest before venturing on into the main system.” He laughed gently, instinctively speaking softly, for, apart from a natural reverence for the place, they both knew that in tunnels such as these talk travels, and neither could guess what dangers lay ahead.

So they went steadily and cautiously uphill through tunnels that became progressively bigger and more airy. They had a sense of ancient holiness and here and there the chalk was carved with ancient script. Sometimes, too, the tunnels seem to have been especially aligned with the great flints that the chalk held, stones with which Tryfan was familiar from the Ancient System in Duncton Wood, but these in Uffington were on a more massive scale. On their convoluted surfaces, and across their polished faces where they were broken, sound seemed changed and lost, echoing away to come back minutes later from other flints.

More than once Tryfan started back into a defensive stance, mistaking the echoes of their own pawsteps for attacking moles and finding that he was raising his talons to his own shadow. It needed an effort of concentration to keep a sense of direction, but Boswell had trained him well and he did not lose his way when Boswell went ahead too fast and was out of sight for a while.

Eventually Boswell stopped. “We’re nearing the main system now,” he said in a low voice. “So we will go even more carefully.”

“In case there are alien moles about?”

“That, and the fact that these are the Holy Burrows. Respectful quiet is expected from all moles here. From scribemoles, silence, unless speech is essential, which it rarely is. But just ahead we may eat and rest, and pause awhile. I suggest, Tryfan, that you do as I do and think a little upon our journey past and find strength for the days to come.” Boswell’s ‘pausing awhiles’ were his term for meditation, and Tryfan knew it could take hours. He resigned himself to a long wait.

Soon after this the soil darkened and the chalk fell away beneath them: they had run into a deposit of clay and flints which was replete with food and comfortable burrows.

“Guest quarters,” whispered Boswell. “Your father once stayed here.”

Tryfan found food and they settled down to crunch a few worms and recover from the shocks and effort of this final stage of their journey.

“Think a little upon our journey,” Boswell had said... but now they were here, and they were safe, Tryfan felt tired, terribly tired, and as Boswell began a formal meditation Tryfan found his thoughts drifting, despite all he could do, with his body warm and his talons relaxing, as around him the White Mole’s thanksgiving for a safe homecoming seemed to fill the old place with images of the moleyears of travel and toil it had taken them to get here, and replace them one by one with the light of Silence, as if those dangers had not been.

“A scribemole does not dwell on dangers past, or dangers yet to come; nor on what might be or might have been. A scribemole strives for the Silence that is here now for all to hear. But at a time of homecoming a scribemole thanks the Stone for the grace of returning and so now I thank the Stone...” Boswell’s words were half instruction, half prayer but Tryfan began to have difficulty hearing them, for around Boswell was a light, white and pure, and Tryfan wanted to reach his whole body into it.

“B – Bos – B –” But Tryfan seemed unable to say Boswell’s name.

“Sleep now, Tryfan, sleep and rest, for you have completed your task and brought me home to Uffington safeguarded. Now your new task will begin and you will need strength for the trials ahead that you will face alone.”

“New task... alone...” Boswell’s words sounded a note of alarm in Tryfan’s heart in the moments before sleep, or a dreaming unconsciousness, overtook him. Certainly afterwards Tryfan never quite knew if he slept or not. He remembered being unable to move, unable to speak, unable to be anything but at the centre of images that Boswell conjured up about him with his incantations and thanksgivings.

He sensed that Boswell was near him, touching him, and that there was a deep Silence over the burrow out of which came Boswell’s voice... “He has learnt worthily, Stone, but he is young. He knows not yet what he already knows and so he will feel fear and suffer doubt and loss. But he is the one I have found and on whom thy burden will rest. Guide him, give him strength, let him hear, let him....”

And Tryfan wanted to raise himself from his waking sleep and ask Boswell or the Stone or whatever it was that spoke, ask him, ask it... “Bos – B –” but his talons were as weak as a pup’s and his eyes could not see as that voice repeated, “Sleep, rest...” and Tryfan
was
a pup again, running up the tunnels away from his siblings and out into the sunlight of Duncton Wood whose scents were warm with summer, whose light was dappled and fresh, whose trees were comforting and whose Stone stood high in the centre of the Ancient System. There was Rebecca his mother and Bracken his father and Comfrey his half-brother to go and see... but Tryfan chose instead to wander free in that great wood until one day when he was older his path turned to the Stone, before which he crouched in awe wondering if he could dare think that he, Tryfan, might become a scribemole: “Why does a mole have to travel so far just to find himself in the same place?” he had asked the Stone later, when he had matured; and it had been then that Boswell had found him. And now, he was there again, and sensed the wonder of Duncton Wood about him, its green old vales and its rich pattern of tunnels which were his own, and he felt content that he was of it, and it forever of him; but he felt finally a sadness that he had to leave it, and a deep desire that one day the Stone might allow him to return and not rove again from the system he loved.