Duncton Stone (103 page)

Refreshed at last, he began to explore, and found evidence enough that once delvers had lived here, for the scree and rocks had shifted, and whole chambers were exposed, huge and beautiful, like shadows of a glory that once was. He found tunnels exposed to the wet raging light and entered them, his paws slipping and slopping in the water there, the sound echoing ahead. Whilst all around this ruined surface huge rockfalls were scattered as they had fallen from above, and plants lay freshly torn and uprooted to show that here the rocks and ground shifted continually. It was no place for mole to be.

A roar, a spattering of sound, and off to his right flank rocks spewed down the lower reaches of the cliff. A sharp report, louder than the Reap s roar, and somewhere a single rock crashed and cracked.

Night came once more and he slept again, fear rising in him as he realized how many were the falls, and how easily he could be killed. The very rock under which he had made his scrape was hit from above, and the scrape he had made had half fallen in on him when he awoke, it was so sodden with the spray.

“I’ve been and now I’ll go,” he told himself at dawn, “and by the Stone’s grace I’ll —”

He stopped and stilled, certain suddenly that he was being watched by mole. He turned and looked about, but saw nothing. Then, movement in the corner of his eye: he turned and all was still again.

Ghosts, Waythorn had said, and ghosts they must surely be.

“I’ll go,” he whispered to himself, shaken, and he turned upslope to go back the way he had come and as he did so felt his heart stop and freeze with fear.

Ahead, stanced across his path, was the largest mole he had ever seen – or what seemed a mole, at least.

It had no eyes that he could see, yet, eyeless, it stared at him. Then it shifted, snouted at the air, and came for him quite fast. He wanted to run but could not. The Reap’s roar seemed to mount in his ears. He had never been so afraid.

The mole – for mole it was – had a snout, but it was huge; it had paws, but enormous ones; it had fur, but wiry, and black as night. It stopped before him and was still.

Whillan tried to speak but could not.

The mole snouted slowly forward, nearer and nearer, its great snout trembling, filthy with grit and slime, and then it raised a paw. Slowly that paw came towards him, slowly touched him, and Whillan saw for sure the mole was blind. Its eyes were folds and in the folds were glints of white.

“Mole...” said Whillan, but he knew it could not reply.

“Mole...” he said once again, but he knew it could not hear.

The mole’s paw touched him, felt him, head and shoulders, belly and rump, and then his snout.

And then the mole uttered a sound such as Whillan thought he could never have heard, broken, high in places, a sound that was a thousand cries; a sound from a void beyond imagining.

“Mole,” whispered Whillan involuntarily, for in all his life he had never heard so bleak and so hopeless a cry for help; and Whillan raised his paw, and touched the mole’s face, and then took his huge paw to his own.

The mole’s head slumped and he seemed to listen to the ground. He snouted noisily. He raised a back paw and thumped it down. He raised his head and gave a broken roar. Then he turned quite quickly, and moved upslope and paused. Whillan followed and the mole moved on again, always pausing and always seeming to know when Whillan was close behind again.

Into a tunnel they went, though Whillan barely noticed it, and then down it and through a portal, and along an echoing, much-delved gallery, on and on until the mole began to slow and move with a gentleness quite out of proportion to his size. Just ahead Whillan caught a glimpse of a huge shaft of light that came down into the depths they were in, which told him that whatever lay ahead was half exposed to the sky. The roar of the Reap could be heard as well, and somewhere high above, among the cliff-tops he supposed, was the raucous call of raven, and the rumble of falling, shifting rock.

The mole had paused, and now he turned towards Whillan, who sensed that he should stop. For a moment one of the eye-flaps opened and a white eye rolled and the mole uttered a curious mewing sound, which, to Whillan’s surprise, for he had really observed nothing at all of where they were, was subtly caught by delvings, and echoed softly ahead of them towards the light.

These were delved sounds of reassurance, and Whillan recognized in them not just that mewing the mole had made, but elements of the strange sound he had uttered when they first met. Whillan looked about and saw that the huge tunnel they were in was delved a hundred thousand ways, more rich and subtle than any he had ever seen.

The mole sounded some of the delvings with his talons and new echoes and sounds went forth and ahead, and that mewing once again, made soft and vibrant by the wall. The mole stilled and waited, Whillan remained motionless, the sounds died away towards the light ahead of them, and silence came, but for the wind and the distant roar of the Reap.

Then, so faint that Whillan would not have known to listen for it had not the mole had his own head tilted near a wall, and the pads of his paws to it as if waiting for some vibration, there came a response.

It was weak, and hurt, and striving to be loud but not quite succeeding. It came towards them, whispering along the walls, and it was a call not just for help, but of reassurance too, as if to say, “I am still here, I am...”

“I am alive...” whispered Whillan, feeling a sudden urgency to answer that weak and fading sound.

The mole turned to him once more and Whillan went to him and touched his paw, and then they went on again.

The light he had glimpsed earlier flooded into a caved-in chamber, which was half filled with new-fallen rocks, and through the gaping roof he could see the vertical rise of the cliff, and ravens floating high against a grey sky.

The chamber was deeply delved, but its sounds were fractured and broken and Whillan wondered at that gentler sound he had heard but moments before. He looked and saw that along the unbroken side of the chamber to his right a recent delving had been made, its lines most strange, most fine, and he knew the mole had made them.

They went on, down another tunnel, through a chamber whose roof was dangerously fractured and from which a tiny stream of water fell, and then once more there was light ahead, and another caved-in chamber. But this time the chamber was almost all gone and a great mass of jumbled rock from the cliff above slewed across it, almost up to the inner wall.

The mole turned, took Whillan’s paw, and led him towards the base of the fallen rock. Somewhere above them rocks shifted, somewhere else nearby stones spattered down, and one rolled away into darkness. Water dripped on Whillan’s face, icy cold.

The mole headed for a narrow gap, which by the nature of the fall, and what remained of the walls and roof, was in the darkest part of the ruined place, paused and turned again and reached a paw to Whillan. Gently, for the rocks all about gave the sense that at any moment they could shift and slide and crush them both, he pushed him through the gap.

He saw her but a little way beyond it, face down, her left paw trapped by rock, her white fur filthy with mud and grit. The other paw reached out along the ground and just touched the wall, and Whillan saw that the recent delving began and ended where her talons were.

“Humlock?” she whispered, straining to look round, touching the delving as she spoke.

The mewing came from beyond the gap, a shimmer of sound, communication.

“I’m not Humlock,” said Whillan, “he brought me here. You’re trapped. No, no, don’t try to move...”

She strove to turn her head to see him and as she did so pulled at her trapped paw. She began to panic. There was an ominous shifting of rock and Whillan looked up at the massed and looming rockfall, heard it groan and scrape, and knew how near it was to moving once again.

“Whatmole are you?” she whispered, shivering.

“Sshh!” he said, as quietly, “don’t talk. We’ll get you out of here, Glee.”

He used her name as naturally as if he had known her all his life: Humlock and Glee, of course he knew their names, and what they were. These moles were once his father’s friends.

“Mole, who sent you?” she whispered. “Let me see your face.”

He moved round where she might see him and he saw a bloodied face, and black eyes that might in other circumstances have been bright and cheerful. Now they were fatigued and wan, and yet held warmth.

“Rooster sent me a long, long time ago. I am Rooster’s son,” he said, and wished he had not, for she gasped, and heaved, and broke into the most terrible cries.

Whillan felt himself lifted bodily from her, and Humlock took his place.

“All right, it’s all right, my love, he’s of the Stone.”

She spoke the words though Humlock could not hear them, but at the same time her talons ran and played across his face in movements that Whillan guessed was her speech to him. He touched her in reply and seemed to wait.

Astonishingly, Glee laughed. “He wants to know whatmole you are, but I can’t tell him what you said. Now listen, Rooster’s son, if that’s what you really are. I cannot move and he can’t move me. If he tries the rocks shift. He might hold them back while I escape, but then he would be crushed. If he leaves me I die. If he stays with me we both die, which is what we thought was best. He lay with me, and fed me...”

“How long?” asked Whillan.

“Days and nights now, days. Humlock’s fed me, cleaned me, warmed me, just as I did him over the years when he’s been ill or lost.”

“Lost?”

“In himself, deep in his silent self, sometimes he gets lost and cannot find his way back to me. Now, mole, the Stone’s sent you and you must do the Stone’s work. Listen, for it will take you too long to find out for yourself. On past here is a delved chamber, the last of the great ones to survive.”

“I understand,” said Whillan.

“Yes, of course you would, you would. Rooster sent you! Oh mole, oh... You’ll need to sound the delvings there. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try. And then...?”

“Sound them, make them true, sound them hard, and then he’ll raise the rock as the sounds of the delvers of the past come here to help us before they’re lost for ever in the shadows of the rocks, and the light of the grey sky.”

“There are other moles...?”

“None living as we are. But generations live on in their delvings,” whispered Glee, with such conviction that Whillan almost believed it might be true.

“Listen. Humlock will raise the rock, they will have a little time to hold the rockfall back and I shall... crawl, I expect, crawl as fast as my hurt paw will allow, and you will be ready to reach out and guide him over to us. For remember, the rocks will move, and the delvings break, and only you will be there to guide him out of here, and only I can guide you out of the chamber, and only he can raise the rock.”

It was a roundel of destiny and Whillan could not doubt that it was true; whatever it meant, she had worked it out as it must be, and he had trust in her.

“I’ll go and look...”

“But hurry, mole, for the Stone has sent you, and the Stone moves on. We are the last moles and I wish to live! Don’t look, do!”

Whillan went through the far portal into the chamber, which, so long before, Privet had described when she told Rooster’s tale. Huge and dark it was, but dripping now, shifting, full of wind yet still integral to itself as Whillan reached up to the richest and most ancient delvings he had ever seen and without more ado began to sound. Round and round he ran, and swooped, and up he reached, to delvings that sounded, up to more, higher and higher towards the arched heights above.

“Rooster’s son...” she cried out, and he ran back in time to see huge Humlock, made dwarflike by the fall of rocks he strove against, reach his talons to the rock that pinned her down, and unfortunately held them all, and begin to raise it. Even as he did the sound in the chamber became a vast furore of noise and thundering paws that spiralled down through time and swept from behind him, through him, over him, and out towards the broken light and rocks, out to where Humlock heaved, to help...

His back was to the rock, his forepaws stretched under it, his back paws pushing as his shoulders bulged and his belly stretched out and up with effort.

“Now!” Glee cried.

Then Whillan, forgetting what he was meant to do, the dark and light sound all about, ran to her, grasped her good paw, pulled and pushed her towards the portal into the chamber and then turned and saw the rock that Humlock had raised fall back, Humlock lift his paws to his ears as the delving sounds were lost and he “heard” only chaos. He staggered, confused and lost in space and time as all about him the rocks began to roar and move and crush down against him, pushing him forward in dust and noise, unbalancing him and he not knowing where he was and slumping down, head lower, body curling, down, down out of this world and into his own lost place where he could only wait to die.

It was Glee’s shout that shook Whillan from his horror and reminded him what he must do: “Go to him, mole, guide my beloved out of there!”

Whillan went, grasped Humlock’s paw even as the first rocks rained down on him, savagely pulled him clear and brought him into the chamber, whilst behind them the rocks poured down, and mounted up and rolled after them in terrible pursuit.

“Now, follow me!” cried Glee.

As the chamber’s walls shook and vibrated ever more violently, and the delving sounds cracked and broke and generations of moles cried out their last lost cries, they followed her up and away through tunnels wide and narrow, through chambers dark and light, up and up, away from the sound that followed them, away from the walls that crashed after them, each place they had run through breaking into ruins behind them.

Up and out to the light of day and the roar of the Reap as the Charnel rocked and broke about them.

“Up to the Creeds!” cried Whillan, grasping at Humlock’s paw again as if in the hope that he would understand. He seemed to, for then, half carrying, half pushing Glee, they ran from where the rocks crashed down and the cliffs slid and heaved, up to safer, more secure ground, if any there was safe. Up until they fell, far short of where the Creeds rose darkly ahead, but clear of the crashing dangers below.