Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  “Come, Tryfan, come now for time is short,” said a voice which he supposed was Boswell’s, though the old mole seemed disconnected from the words. Then other sound, building like the billowing of clouds above, storm clouds perhaps, yes yes yes, dark they were, sound that grew louder and he could not bear it. The mounting sound of Silence.

  “Boswell!” he cried, “I can’t —”

  “You must!” said Boswell. “Of all moles, you must.”

  “Where?” asked Tryfan, for there was somewhere where the Stillstone could rest, he could rest, he could find peace and not this resounding Silence in which he felt so isolated and lost, so wonderstruck and fearful that he would lose it, the thing that caused him suffering and bliss.

  “Think of the Stone,” said Spindle like a parent to a pup.

  Stone. There. Somewhere. The seventh Stillstone and Tryfan held it from him and dared to look at it and into its light and for a moment he was still and heard the Silence as if he were part of it, and it was his own.

  Then its enormity came in on him again, and was too much for him to bear, and he ran past them, across the surface in the night past one Stone and then the next and on, now here now there, huge movement in the night as in a dance of seasons, and past the third Stone and the fourth. His body was of the Silence now, large perhaps, small, he neither knew nor cared, he was running unseeing but knowing, sure now.

  Past the fifth and on hugely to the sixth and laughing, dancing, the great moon swinging to the Solstice point as he turned and called out, “See the seventh Stone!”

  Then Tryfan of Duncton stood in the moonshadow of the seventh Stone which neither he nor Spindle had been able to see before, and which was not there now but for moles that could see, and he turned and raised his paw, and high towards a pit of smaller stones he threw the Stillstone, an arcing crescent in the night, over the moon perhaps, among the stars and then down to the ground before them, the sound of Silence falling, somewhere. Many moles saw that moment as a shooting light in the sky, many that, in time, Tryfan and Spindle would meet. Some were moles of the Word, and they would meet them soon indeed. But others were moles of the Stone, humble moles, moles beset by doubt and loss, and they saw that seventh Stillstone light that night of the March Solstice and their pulse quickened, and in their hearts was born the hope that change was coming, good change, for which perhaps they might be needed, however weak, insignificant or oppressed they seemed. Then the light was gone leaving only a memory in the night sky, and wondering moles with a secret in their hearts.

  While at Seven Barrows Spindle cried; watched the Stillstone arc and cried out, “There!” His talon pointed to where it fell.

  Somewhere there, just before them, it was done, the Stillstone gone to ground. And dark returned.

  But moments later a dull, deep moan that rose quickly to a mighty roar came from a little to the north, carried on that too-familiar bitter breeze: the sound of many moles, dark moles, dark sound. Then Tryfan and Spindle instinctively came close, each protective of the other, and above them, the shadow of the seventh Stone cast beyond him across the grass and towards where the Stillstone lay, Boswell, White Mole, great mole, awesome and commanding in his strength.

  “Tell of this night,” said Boswell. “Scribe of it that allmole may know that here the Stillstones lie, waiting, for there are the chosen generations and the time is come for them again. Scribe of it, saying that all moles may seek the Stillstones and they may take them up if they have the strength.”

  “Will there be such moles?” whispered Tryfan, for he felt the weight of the Stillstone of Silence upon him yet.

  Boswell nodded. “The first always find it hardest, as you have, Tryfan and Spindle, for the hardest thing is having faith to do what has not yet been done. So, a first pawstep is hard, and a first hello; a first healing is difficult and a first fight. Over the centuries moles found and carried the Stillstones to Uffington. Now you two have brought them finally to ground. Others will take up the burden you carried the easier for knowing that you carried it.”

  “And where will they take the Stones?” wondered Spindle, frowning, for he liked to find a problem and ponder its solution.

  Boswell smiled, his eyes alight with love and care for each of them.

  “They will take them to a system where a mole is,” he said, “a mole whose laughter and joy you have heard, Spindle.”

  Then Spindle’s eyes opened in wonder, and he lifted his snout a little as if to scent out such a wondrous system, and the moon shone on it, and caught his fur. He remembered the young female in the library.

  “But where is that system?” asked Tryfan. “Is it the Wen? Is it Whern? Or is it far afield like Siabod?”

  “Lead moles to the Stone as I have taught you and you will find it, Tryfan. Tell them of the Silence, teach them to have courage in the face of darkness and doubt, lead them wisely and with love, prepare them for the coming of one who will cry out from the Silence that they might hear it as you have.”

  “The Stonemole?” whispered Spindle, who knew the legends well enough.

  Boswell nodded, weary now.

  “Is that the mole I saw?”

  Boswell’s eyes lightened for a moment and he said, “Oh no, no, I think she was not the Stonemole. She was – she was...” and Spindle leaned closer, for there was a yearning in him to know the answer.

  Boswell stirred restlessly, beset suddenly by other concerns, but then some desire in him too took his attention back to the waiting Spindle, and his eyes softened once more. “She was the hope of Mole, of all of us, and she will come, Spindle, and then others will know what to do, moles, ordinary moles, and they will know always that the Silence may be theirs. Yes! Always! And then I....”

  “What will you do then, Boswell?” asked Tryfan, and he came forward and touched Boswell, for the White Mole was weary and tired, and sad too. “What, Boswell?”

  Boswell smiled ruefully. “Don’t know. Not sure. Old fool. Foolish fool. I —” but Boswell did not look old. As he wept suddenly, and Tryfan held him in his strong young paws, it seemed to Tryfan that he held a pup beneath the stars, and a pup that was lost. He sensed that in this moment his future lay.

  Then the surface was touched by distant and ominous vibration and the strange moment passed as Boswell turned sharply from Tryfan, his tears gone, and said, “Now we must leave. The grikes are searching for us.”

  “We must go southward now,” said Tryfan.

  Boswell shook his head and pointed a talon northward, towards Uffington.

  “Your way, like your enemy, lies there, Tryfan, and you must take it.”

  “But...” began Tryfan.

  Boswell laid a paw on his and said, “You brought me safely to Uffington, now I must show you both the safe way from it and set you on your path. No “buts” Tryfan, no doubts, Spindle, the Solstice has come, the Stillstones are placed and now the difficult dawning begins, but each of you is prepared as best you ever can be for what is yet to come. But at least I can give you my safe guidance across Uffington and set you on to the northward path.”

  “But you’re coming with us!” said Tryfan, more as a command than a request.

  “Follow me,” was all Boswell said for reply, and he led them silently northward, and a grey dawn light touched their flanks as they went.

  They found a pall of evil over Uffington as they made their way into its tunnels and then by secret careful ways to the heart of the Holy Burrows themselves.

  Most of the moles they had seen making passage the day before seemed to have passed on again, leaving behind only a few guardmoles in charge. Yet a few was quite enough.

  The three moles saw darkness and savagery, for the rituals of the March Solstice are savage indeed among the grikes, who make killings and snoutings then in the name and honour of the Word. First of miscreants, then of the aged, then of the useless ill, and finally of the weak ones of new litters. Such moles are sacrificed, cast outside the Word by murder and torture, barbed on t
horns and wire, snouted savagely. But worse than that, their deaths are used to defile the ground on which they are made: at Uffington they desecrated the tunnels of the Holy Burrows whose majesty was belittled by their blood, and whose peaceful tunnels were stricken by their screams and torture-wrought blasphemies against the Stone that protected them not.

  Blood red was the colour of the evil that had come to the Holy Burrows as the grikes ritually desecrated that ancient place, leaving the wounded and the crushed to crawl hopelessly along the ancient tunnels into the darkness of their death.

  The sights that Tryfan and Spindle saw then they never forgot, and they might have been filled with hate but that Boswell said again and again, “Remember the grikes are moles, they are but moles. As there is light, so there is dark. Remember my words and judge them not, Tryfan. Lead others not in hatred against them for that is the way to darkness. Rather, lead them towards the Stone, remember, remember. This will be the hardest thing but it is the most important.”

  Then Boswell turned to Spindle saying, “Remind him, help him to remember, forgive them and the light of Silence may be thine, and those that follow you.”

  But it is hard to forgive. In one place, out on the surface, they found an old male taloned in the chest and left to die amongst others already dead.

  “What moles are you?” asked Tryfan, who had gone to the mole to see what he could do for him, for Tryfan had been taught healing by his mother, and had learned more of it from Boswell.

  “Of Avebury,” the suffering mole gasped, “all of us. The grikes took over the system and then at the beginning of March we set off here, and many of us died on the way. Many others they have killed. They brought us here but they might as well have killed us there! Avebury is no more. All are gone.” And so the mole rambled, putting a paw to his wounds but unable to stop the blood which pressed out between his talons and on to the grass in which he lay. They stayed with him till he died.

  So, apparently unseen, they crossed through the Holy Burrows, Boswell seeming to want them to see the ruin of the place that they would not forget.

  But late in the afternoon of the second day, a guard-mole caught sight of one of them, others reported the suspicion that alien moles were about and soon it was clear that the grikes were in pursuit of them, for parties were routinely working their way through tunnels and on the surface with such method and efficiency that they were driven out on to the surface, away from tunnel entrances, surrounded by the sense of remorseless quartering of the high ground of Uffington all about them.

  The parties communicated with each other by an ominous drumming on the ground, staccato and irregular, and Tryfan, as the strongest of the three and their physical protector, was now very worried. By nightfall they found themselves crouching near the highest point of Uffington Hill. While to the north, beyond the approaching searchers and far below them, the Vale of the White Horse stretched into darkness, eerily visible sometimes when the cloud briefly cleared and the moon emerged at its brightest. Around them the grass flurried with the breeze that drove the night clouds, and the gusts were getting stronger. Change, always change, coming to Uffington; change coming to allmole. And then, low and distant, the Blowing Stone sounded – a single sombre note from out of the western darkness.

  “You know where we are?” said Boswell suddenly.

  “Of course I do,” said Tryfan rather tetchily, for he felt they had been led into unnecessary danger. Neither Stones nor Stillstones to protect them here; just themselves and they were three against many.

  Boswell’s old voice was calm and gentle about them. They had been facing north, towards the ever-cold wind, but now he turned his back on it and surveyed the nightscape of Uffington beneath which lay the Holy Burrows.

  “Here have the great traditions and secrets of the scribemoles been kept, the rituals been enacted, the disciplines been undertaken; here an important part of the spirit of moledom was nurtured and the Silence of the Stone heard. Here....

  “Here,” whispered Boswell again, his voice filled with a gentle sadness, the sadness of an open heart that gives; a sadness that has longing in it, great longing, aged longing, that reached to those times Tryfan had imagined himself to be travelling down, and forward too, a little impatiently. To the time Tryfan had sensed as well was coming....

  “Here, now,” said Boswell. Now. And Tryfan looked about him in wonder. Now. And for a moment he understood that word, of the way that Boswell uttered it and in it he knew no fear, and knowing no fear he heard a Silence, great and good, burgeoning all about him so that he sighed and tears came to him. The Silence was now and in the being of it completely, where a mole is not himself any more, nor even a mole.

  Then he looked around, a little embarrassed, at Spindle who to his astonishment he saw was yawning and scratching himself.

  Then Spindle sighed too.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “Too much excitement, too little food, too much travel. Too much danger. I think we should run for it while we still can... but if you two are going to talk about it I’m going to have a sleep.”

  Which, to Tryfan’s astonishment, he did.

  Then Boswell said, “Honour him, Tryfan, for Spindle will always be at your side to love and support you in your task. The Stone has found him for you, as the Stone found you for me, to be a good companion, to learn and to teach me when I had forgotten what I knew, to touch me with talon and heart, faith and hope. So will loyal Spindle be with you when you need him and when you cannot or will not accept help from any other.”

  Boswell reached out a paw and touched Tryfan gently on the shoulder, and drew him a little away from where Spindle slept. The ground was stealthy with vibration, and the air over Uffington heavy with darkness.

  “It is nearly time now, my dear Tryfan, for you and I to part.”

  Tryfan tried to protest, but Boswell’s touch on him tightened as he stilled him and said, “You have learnt what I have taught you well....”

  “But I know so little,” whispered Tryfan. “Hardly a thing! I can barely scribe, and there is so much more to know....”

  “Then knowing that, you know much indeed,” said Boswell. “Now listen to me, and listen well, for there are teachings a mole must utter but once lest too much is lost in the telling. It is in the doing with awareness that the learning comes. You say you have learnt little, well, let us see what this “little” is!”

  Boswell laughed suddenly, in that joyous way he sometimes did in which he seemed a pup again, and Tryfan smiled as well, remembering suddenly the first months with Boswell when again and again he had asked him to teach him something – anything – and Boswell had laughed and told him he had started doing so already and one day Tryfan would know it.

  “But what?” Tryfan had asked.

  “You’ll know when you stop trying so hard to learn!” Boswell had said and now, now, Boswell was asking him, “So what have I taught you?”

  Perhaps Boswell’s voice was raised a little then, perhaps it was not a night to sleep, for unseen by either of them Spindle stirred, and his eyes opened, and he saw them close and heard them talking as he lay still, listening. He suspected that Boswell knew he heard, and was sure that the Stone did, but it was right that he did, for through him the first teachings of Tryfan, the greatest teacher of his generation, might one day be known to allmole.

  “What have I taught you?” repeated Boswell.

  Tryfan settled quickly down, grounding each paw one by one as Boswell had taught him and said with confidence, “To think true thoughts, a mole must learn not to think at all!” Boswell had once told him, mysteriously as it seemed then, “Ground the paws, one, two, three, four, use the paws and the feel of the earth to forget the troubled mind, the tired body and the doubting spirit – all misguided, all unreal! Ground the paws with mindlessness and true action comes! But ssh! Don’t tell anymole!”

  Now Boswell was crouched before him, and Tryfan, placing his paws in that special way he had done a thousand times b
efore was thinking of not thinking, and thinking that....

  “Tryfan!” called out Boswell suddenly and sharply. “State the First Teaching!”

  “The First is that where my paws are, where I am, there is goodness and light, right there!” said Tryfan, a part of him astonished at his own words, another deeper, truer part not surprised at all. “The light is waiting to be seen, right here, here! And it is that good light that makes a mole laugh out loud because he made such an effort to see something always before his snout.”

  Boswell nodded, grinning, as if happy, at last, to share a secret he had wanted to speak of.

  “And then?” he said.

  “The Second Teaching is that a mole who believes that defending his burrow, his system, or even his life, is more important than putting one paw in front of the other towards the Silence of the Stone, is a mole afraid. And a mole afraid is a mole in fear, and a mole in fear cannot fully see the light. So the most important thing is where this paw goes next.”

  Tryfan raised his right paw and looked at it, grinning too, the paw raised between them like some object that was waiting to be told what to do.