Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  Through those long and tortuous tunnels from Uffington to the Stones of Seven Barrows he carried them, starting in November and continuing for four moleyears through to the following March. Whatever mole it was had come to him, whatever it was she had shown him, it was not a dream or a vision: the Books were there, and the Stillstones, terrible for a mole to contemplate, nearly impossible to carry. Seven Stillstones, seven Books made, all but one have come to ground... and then the names of the Stillstones, one by one... of Earth for living, of Suffering, of Fighting, of Darkness, of Healing, of Light....

  These six, one by one, good Spindle had to carry to safety before the grikes came back, and with them the Books. And so he had, each one seeming a greater burden than the last, and with the dreadful fourth one, of Darkness, he all but succumbed to its might, but the light of his great faith carried him through.

  Down to the Stones he took them, hiding the Books in a chamber of his own finding, and hurling the Stillstones out on to the surface among other stones, so doing as the young mole whose name he did not know had told him. Until early in March his task was finished, and he slept and wandered in utter fatigue for many days. Then a new energy came to him and, knowing the Spring Solstice was coming, he spent a final few days searching the Library and taking what last significant fragments and folios he could, and hiding them where he had hidden the Books.

  “And where is that? Are you going to show us?” asked Tryfan at the end of Spindle’s strange story.

  “Of course I am. I can’t go through the rest of my life being the only one who knows, and if I can’t trust a White Mole and his disciple who can I trust?” said Spindle.

  With which he took them back underground, in and around and among the tunnels they had been through before and by others they had not noticed, until down there somewhere, deep across that legendary vale, in a place that only moles of faith and courage will find, Spindle led them to a chamber lined with stone, made by twofoots in the centuries before mole memory, and showed them the result of his courage and long industry.

  There were eighty-seven complete books and a further sixty major fragments. As he could not read scribing very well, Spindle had little idea what he was rescuing, but he had tended to go for older books which he could recognise by the colour of the bark and the style of scribing.

  Boswell stared at the great array of books – carefully ranged and stacked, and went to them and touched them. Many were the treasures there, including a number of the historic Rolls of the Systems, which are the accounts of travelling scribemoles of the different systems they visited and reported on.

  But most important of all there were the six Books, scribed at different times, starting with the oldest of all, which is the Book of Earth, and scribed, it is said, by Linden, who had loved Ballagan, first mole, whose talon strikes upon the very Stone of Stones had made the chips which are the seven Stillstones.

  Boswell looked briefly at the six Books, touching them lightly, and inviting Tryfan to do the same, that he might know the feel of these Books, each written in a different age, by moles – White Moles – who had reached enlightenment.

  All there but the last Book, the Book of Silence. And Tryfan saying nothing, for he knew that in their final moments, before the Silence took them, his parents Bracken and Rebecca, had given not only the seventh Stillstone to Boswell, but the Book of Silence, or its secret, as well. They had understood that he was the mole who would scribe it.

  Now Boswell crouched before the six Books, his snout low, and his flanks pale and worn.

  “Will you scribe the last Book?” asked Tryfan boldly. “Will you, Boswell?”

  “Each of the Books marks a stage in the maturing of mole,” replied Boswell, “and many moles have had to struggle to make such moments possible. Now the last Stillstone is nearly come to ground, as the ancient text puts it, and already the Book of Silence is being scribed. I have been scribing it a long time, Tryfan, such a long time.”

  “But I haven’t seen you scribe, except for teaching me, in all the years of our journey to Uffington.”

  “Haven’t you?” said Boswell. “Well, I have been, and for a long time before that. Yes, yes, a long time now. I hope that one day you’ll know it.”

  There was silence among them and they contemplated Spindle’s great work of rescue. Then Tryfan asked Spindle, “Where did you hide the Stillstones?”

  “I didn’t hide them,” said Spindle, “I did what that youngster told me and put them with ordinary —”

  “But where?” said Tryfan urgently.

  “Well... er... it’s hard... you see....”

  “You haven’t forgotten!” said Tryfan, appalled.

  “I don’t think I ever knew, as a matter of fact,” said Spindle defensively. Then, turning from the chamber and leading them once more to the surface, he waved the talons of his right paw somewhat vaguely over the slopes and vales of Seven Barrows.

  “I brought the first Stillstone up here and thought I would try to put it somewhere where I could find it and I thought I had – well I threw it in a stonepit and watched it carefully but I couldn’t exactly be sure that the one I thought it was was the one it had been... so then when I brought the second Stillstone, and it’s no good looking so disapproving, Tryfan, because the Stillstones aren’t exactly fun to carry even if they are small and I doubt very much if you would have done better even if you are stronger than me because there’s something about them that weighs down a mole. So anyway... I got the second one and took it to the same stonepit except that I wasn’t sure by then if that had been the one I threw the first one in... and by the third I was utterly confused, and by the fourth, which was no joke at all being the Stillstone of Darkness, all I wanted to do was get rid of the thing and I can’t remember much at all about the last ones...” He tailed off.

  “Well, it sounds a bit pathetic to me. You’re sure you don’t know exactly where they are?” said Tryfan suspiciously. But Spindle gave him such a look of hurt honesty that Tryfan apologised and then fell silent.

  “All I do know,” said Spindle finally, “is that each of the Stillstones went in a pit near one of the six Stones, which has an obvious kind of logic, I suppose. It’s the sort of thing the Stone would make a mole do!” He laughed, a little ruefully.

  “Well!” said Tryfan, exasperated. “Well!” And turning to Boswell he looked at him for some kind of support, or comment, but Boswell gave none, but instead scratched himself, hummed an annoyingly cheerful tune quite out of keeping with the sombreness of the occasion, and then found some food and ate it.

  “Sleep seems to be in order,” he said. And, settling his snout along his wrinkled paws, he closed his eyes and started to snore.

  And Tryfan and Spindle eventually settled themselves in companionable proximity, and lay staring at the fall of night, listening to the eternal north wind, their minds racing with all they had been talking about.

  “By the way, Spindle,” said Boswell, who woke bright and early the following day, “do you happen to know if Brevis named the leader of the grikes in that report of his?”

  “Yes he did. But anyway he told me,” said Spindle. “I know the name of the leader whom the others obey to the death and believe to be the mole Scirpus prophesied would come back to lead the Word to final victory over the Stone.” A look of fear and dread crossed Spindle’s face.

  “Well, what’s he called?” asked Tryfan.

  “Oh, it’s not a male. The grike leader is a female,” said Spindle. “And I saw her, too, just once. She was... she....”

  “Well?” said Boswell.

  “Dark. Strong looking. Her eyes... were... fierce. I saw her, just for a moment. I shouldn’t have done, I know that. She was darkly – um – “He looked down at his paws with embarrassment.

  “Yes?” prompted Tryfan.

  “Beautiful,” said Spindle. “I mean she... she did not look evil. And yet there is something about her to make a mole afraid. Oh yes, terribly afraid. But she was –”


  “‘Beautiful’,” mimicked Tryfan. “Sounds to me you find all females beautiful. Probably haven’t seen enough of them.”

  “And her name?” said Boswell cutting across Tryfan’s remark.

  Even as Spindle said it, Tryfan had the strange and frightening feeling that Boswell already knew it, and had known it all – all of this terror and destruction – and there was in his eyes, and about his whole stance, a sense of expectation, as if time had turned to a point he, Boswell, White Mole, had long waited for.

  “Her name,” whispered Spindle, as if merely uttering it would bring the walls of the chamber crashing down upon them. “Her name is Henbane.”

  The very name seemed to call forth a hush of dread in the chamber they were in. With some difficulty Tryfan turned to Boswell and said, “You look as if that was a name you expected to hear? Do you know of this Henbane?” He tried to sound calm and yet was filled with a nameless dread that turned his stomach and seemed to leave a dark singing in his ears.

  Boswell stared at each of them in turn.

  “Yes, I know of her. A long time ago your father Bracken fought with a mole who had taken over Duncton Wood. An evil mole, and a mole of more power than Bracken could have known. His name is Rune.”

  “Is Rune?” said Tryfan, surprised. “But did not Rune perish over the high cliff to the eastside of the Ancient System on Duncton Hill?”

  “I said,” repeated Boswell, his white fur curiously filled with light, “that Rune was a mole of power. More than power: he is a mole who is a Master of Dark Sound. He survives, as I survive, beyond due years. He has his task as I have mine.”

  “And what of this Rune?” said Tryfan, trying to appear indifferent to the claims of evil power in a mole he thought his own father had destroyed.

  “Henbane is Rune’s daughter,” said Boswell quietly.

  “Rune’s daughter?” repeated Tryfan, aghast. “And of what system is she?”

  “Oh, I know that,” said Spindle. “Henbane is of Whern.”

  “But —” began Tryfan horrified, for he had thought Whern was only a dark place of legend, not real, not extant.

  But even as he began to react to Spindle’s extraordinary claim that a leader from Whern had been to the Holy Burrows themselves, the tunnel was filled with the distant drumming of paws, as of many moles travelling out on the surface – confident moles, strong moles, moles filled with zeal and led with power.

  Tryfan’s natural protectiveness immediately took over, and, ordering the other two to stay still and quiet, he went out on to the surface to see what he could.

  Moles. Many of them. Advancing among the Stones steadily and with dark purpose. Not searching, nor tunnelling, but heading back north the way they had come: heading for Uffington. The grikes had returned to the scene of their cruellest destruction.

  Tryfan went below ground and looked at Spindle and Boswell. No words were spoken, nor needed to be: as the drumming of pawsteps continued for minute after minute and hour after hour, they knew that the Spring Solstice was on them, and the hour of a bloody Atonement had come.

  Chapter Five

  They stayed close and silent in the chamber, fearful of being discovered, but as dusk fell it became obvious that the grikes were on the march, and not searching for enemies.

  Tryfan went up again to see what he could observe and the other two soon followed. The initial drumming of confident pawsteps had thinned, and they could see why. The first wave of moles must have been grike guardmoles, but now there were other moles, captive moles, pitiful moles. The ill, the weak, the aged, the defiant... in groups they came, herded and bullied along by grikes who seemed never happier than when giving commands, never more delighted than when drawing blood with their talons. Time and again Tryfan saw these wretched moles raise weary and frightened eyes, and heard more than one say, “That must be it, that’s Uffington.”

  But they spoke not with hope or delight, as such moles would once have spoken, but with fear and dread, and Tryfan guessed that they knew, or had been told, that at Uffington they would suffer and perhaps die. They had a role to play, and a terrible one, for it was ritualistic and sacrificial, and they were its forfeits.

  It was hard to gauge their numbers and Tryfan soon gave up trying, but certainly there were many of them, more moles together than any of them had ever seen.

  “More than likely they’ve gathered others to their numbers,” said Tryfan, “and will be moving on from here to Buckland, as your master Brevis suggested in his report. Well, for now, this is as good a place to stay as any. We’re more likely to be seen moving than staying still.”

  “Is there nothing we can do?” said Spindle.

  “Nothing that won’t get us killed,” said Tryfan firmly.

  “The Stone will find its own way of dealing with these grikes, and if it includes me in its scheme I shall be well pleased!”

  “What are we going to do when they’ve gone?” asked Spindle, looking worried.

  “Get Boswell to safety,” said Tryfan, speaking almost as if Boswell was not there.

  Boswell had settled down and was examining his worn talons and toothing them clean, first this way and then that, as calm as ever in a crisis in which he could do nothing.

  “Humph!” was all he observed as the other two discussed his safety.

  But when darkness fell, and the pawfalls above petered out and were replaced by a strengthening wind, he said suddenly, “Is there a moon up, and if so what is it?”

  Tryfan went to look.

  “High,” he said. “The Solstice will very soon be on us. Tomorrow or the next day. Hard to make out the moon clearly, but the light’s enough to see the nearest Stone.”

  “We’re nearly finished here then,” said Boswell, sounding pleased. “Very nearly now, Tryfan.” And the way he looked at Tryfan, with compassion and with love, sent a pang through the young mole’s heart, and the premonition he had of a future separated from Boswell came back to him.

  “We’ll get you to safety,” he said hunching his shoulders aggressively. “When it’s safe we’ll leave southwards, away from Uffington, away from the grikes.”

  “No Tryfan, we will not. Your future lies northwards. And yours, Spindle, yours too. Now sleep both of you and I will wake you when the time is ripe. Soon now, very soon...” And his voice was soothing and sleep-making, and the two moles, tired from the grim excitements and discoveries of the past few days, slipped into slumber, the one weak-looking, scholastic and physically uncertain; the other powerful and sure, his fur good and his face maturing now into that of a mole who might in time be a leader of moles of the Stone.

  Unseen, Boswell watched over them, his eyes kindly and concerned, and a silence came to their refuge, deep and good. At last, when the two moles were asleep, Boswell whispered prayers and invocations, and quietly left them to go out on the surface.

  The moon, which had been masked earlier, was clear now, but occasionally high cloud drifted across it, too thin to obscure it, but making a halo that seemed to encircle the sky above where Boswell crouched.

  About him the stonefields stretched out dark in the night, but the taller standing Stones caught the moon’s light, their sides pale and green and rising against the sky and stars. Grass stirred softly and was still; then stirred again.

  Far below, near where the river ran in the darkened vale, an owl shrieked briefly, and another answered it, far away. There was movement in the grass across the vale, and then it was gone, and Boswell sighed. Far, far away, slowly, a roaring owl crossed the vale in the night, its eyes bright for a moment before it turned away, its gaze sweeping some trees, then shining for a moment towards the sky before the gaze and the moan of its call was gone. Grass stirred nearby again.

  “Mole,” he whispered, and then, more softly still, “Mole. Yes, yes, mole. Your time is come.” And the moon’s light was on old Boswell, and his fur was white.

  He turned, and limped back as if he carried a great burden, and then he r
eached the burrow leading to the chamber and went below; while on the surface the Stones seemed hushed and reverent, turned in a way towards the place where he had been. The wind veered, whispered change, and from somewhere near or far, there was laughter of mole, young and joyful and....

  ... And Spindle stirred. Turned in his sleep, snouted up as if some dream was waking him and then stretched out again as Tryfan, the stronger in waking, moved closer to him in the sleeping, and seemed more protected by Spindle than his protector. And then, when they were still again, Boswell took out the seventh Stillstone and laid it on the chamber floor before them and its light came and was on them all.

  “Tryfan! Spindle! Wake now, wake.”

  They woke as if they had never been asleep, and looked in awe at the Stillstone, and at Boswell who was beyond it staring at them.

  “The time is come,” said Boswell simply. “Now Tryfan, take up the Stillstone. You, good Spindle, follow me now, and attend us.” With that Boswell left the chamber.

  Panic gripped Tryfan and he stared speechless at the Stone, and then at Spindle.

  “You must,” said Spindle, “you must do as I did. Think of the Stone and reach out your paw, think....”

  “Come on, Spindle, Tryfan must make his own way now!” called out Boswell, and premonition became terrible certainty in Tryfan: he was going to be separated from Boswell, lost to him as he had been lost to Duncton Wood. Then Tryfan settled his paws on the ground, as he had been taught, and stared at the Stillstone, as Boswell had taught him to stare at many things, and the panic quietened and was nothing, and the sadness too, and he was still.

  Tryfan of Duncton took up the Stillstone and, though he gasped with a kind of pain at the touch of it, burdened suddenly, and old, and staring after the others as they went out on to the surface and wondering where he would find the strength to follow them, yet he did so, thinking of nothing more than the Stone, and the Silence beyond it.

  As he began to climb up out of the chamber towards the surface, the Stillstone was like a cloud of knowing on him; but of a knowledge that seemed too great for mortal mole to bear for it reached up to the stars, and down into the earth, and along, tunnel by tunnel, system by system, to embrace all moles, and more than moles. It was knowledge of suffering and knowledge of love, and it tore at Tryfan’s body and his heart, filling it with jagged light and pain, and he wanted to cast it from himself for it was too much, too great; and yet it was too precious for him to want to cast off, or even to turn from. So that his eyes filled with wonder, as if he could see a beauty of Silence about him, yet his body was weighed down, and his paws shaking, and his snout humble. So, racked, breaking yet exalting, Tryfan of Duncton reached the surface and sought out where Boswell and Spindle had gone. They turned to look back at him and seemed a great distance away, and white, shining white, figures in a moonlit world of rising Stones and night landscapes.