Duncton Found

by William Horwood

  Like Tryfan’s burrow, the one Spindle had occupied was delved towards the hollow trunk and an opening into it brought in light and fresh air. The burrow was much tidier than Tryfan’s, with a small raised area for sleeping, and a high dais on which, Beechen guessed, Spindle had done his scribing. The only untidy objects in the place, apart from the thin layer of dust that lay over everything, were the three folios of bark that lay askew over the dais which looked as if they had been left by a mole who was due to come back imminently.

  “He was working on those before he left for the last time. That was during the day of the night you were born.”

  Beechen reached out a paw and touched the folios, feeling strange to see and touch something so palpably of the day just before he was born.

  “I think I shall like this burrow,” he said. “I can feel Spindle’s presence in it.”

  “Aye,” said Tryfan, “he would have been glad to see it so used. Spindle’s interest was history and his life was spent recording things as they happened in the years he lived. He was a scribemole, Beechen, as I am, but he never called himself such and was always modest about what he did. Nomole has yet seen the works he made, none knows them all, not even myself, for I was busy with my own work, and running here and there. Aye!” Tears were in Tryfan’s eyes but he did not cry, but rather looked about with pride that he himself had known such a mole.

  “Now, here, in this place in the little time we have before you must take up your great task for moledom, I’ll teach you scribing, and here you’ll ken the texts Spindle and I made. While Spindle’s will tell you the history of our times, mine will tell you something of the teachings Bos well your father made.

  “Learn them, ken them, discover how to make your own, but always remember that texts begin with living moles and at their end a mole must put them to one side and go out and live. Unless they help a mole do that they are nothing. A text is but a tunnel made by one mole through difficult territory, so that another may pass through more easily. The difficulty may be in recording it truthfully – as Spindle’s was – or in the Stone-given ability to set down such wisdom as seems to be invested in the lives of moles like Boswell.

  “Neither book, nor text nor folio will so touch another mole that he needs not the touch at first and last of a living paw to his flank, and the true showing of one heart to another, which is the touch of love. This the scribemoles of Uffington forgot, and yet it was their greatest heritage, the thing that gave their work its purpose and intent. I’m not sure Spindle always remembered it either, for all his sterling qualities. But it is a truth Boswell taught me, and for this reason I have left scribing well alone for long periods, to live my life fully, and learn from other moles.”

  “Will you be scribing down here, or just teaching me?” asked Beechen.

  “A mole can only help another experience for himself,” Tryfan said. “Everything else is empty words. So I’ll scribe and as I do so, in whatever way seems best, you’ll learn, and it will not be easy.”

  “What will you scribe?” asked Beechen.

  Tryfan hesitated before replying, and looked once more at the texts he and Spindle had made. He went among them again, touched some, and seemed to think carefully before replying.

  “Well, mole, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you, but rather that I fear to do so. Boswell used to tell me that a scribemole had best not talk about what he is about to scribe lest he lose the will to do so in the talking, and I shall heed his advice now. But when I have got some way with it, choose your time to ask me again and I shall explain what it is I’m about. I should like you to know it in any case before... before we part as in due time we shall. Perhaps what I scribe you may tell to other moles who otherwise might never know it.”

  Tryfan chuckled suddenly.

  “But don’t look so serious and mystified. When I was first with Boswell I thought he had great stores of knowledge he was keeping from me. When he said he had not, and that what he did have was simply ways to show me what I had forgotten that I knew, I did not believe him. “You will one day, mole,” he used to say impatiently.”

  “What was he like?” asked Beechen.

  “Sensible,” said Tryfan. “Sensible enough to know that such a conversation as this leads but to reveries and idle chatter and a mole with much to learn had best begin to do so. Now, you take Spindle’s burrow there. I have work to do.”

  “But what shall I do?” asked Beechen.

  “Do?” repeated Tryfan with a mischievous twinkle to his eyes. “Do nothing. Contemplate. Feel the presence of Spindle who once worked hard here and then make the burrow your own. Contemplate on that.”

  “But...” began Beechen, feeling this was a strange way to start learning anything.

  But Tryfan was gone, and took stance in his own burrow and was silent for a long time.

  Beechen took a determined stance in Spindle’s burrow and was quite uncertain how to proceed with “contemplation”. But he might, perhaps, have succeeded in starting to do that had not the silence of the place been broken suddenly by a scratching sound coming from Tryfan’s burrow, hesitant at first and then with occasional pausings and dour mutterings, increasing in strength and certainty.

  “Scribing!” said Beechen to himself at last, realising the sound was that of talon on bark. “Scribing!” And he stared at the unfinished folio left behind by Spindle on the day he died, and snouted at it and touched it, and wondered how he could ever make sense of it, let alone find words to scribe there of his own.

  Chapter Seven

  Dark eyes, cold eyes; eyes that did not blink but glittered as dark crystal in tunnels where light flees.

  Eyes that followed Henbane, Mistress of the Word, and eyes she railed at. Since Lucerne had struck her she was like a vagrant mole who wanders distracted across a fell whose edge is a void named torment.

  The eyes she saw were the eyes of the sideem who lauded her, who called her supreme, but in whom now she seemed to see only the accusations and contempt she felt for herself.

  With Lucerne’s foul blow on the surface of the High Sideem at Whern, made as lightning struck and rain fell and he found his adult strength, age took Henbane by the throat. And age would never let her go again.

  Doubt, loss, guilt, but most of all uncertainty, ate at her, maddened her, and in the tunnels in which she had reigned from the moment she killed her father Rune with her own talons she now saw only those eyes that stared, and blinked not. And she wandered, muttering and lonely, striking out and killing sometimes, but feeling the cold chill that age can bring.

  Yet Henbane still moved with the same terrible grace that had always caused males to lust after her and feel a dreadful longing for something they felt she had and which, unconsciously perhaps, she gave the false promise of giving.

  Since the birth of her litter by Tryfan her teats had shown, and they showed now when she crouched down: dark teats set in fuller paler fur that Lucerne had suckled into adulthood. Though her fur was still sleek and her body slim, maternity had given her a certain gravity and stillness which transmuted to something else: weariness with life.

  Something had broken in her at that moment Lucerne struck her as if the structure of her mind and life had been held together by a brittle tension that, once cracked, destroyed her all.

  Or nearly. She was not yet destroyed, though her life could never be the same. Yet she whom followers of the Stone reviled, she who caused such agony and sadness across moledom’s systems great and small; she whom all good-thinking moles abhorred... she did what many better moles could never do. She stared into the dark, still pool that was her life, saw evil, but did not flinch or turn away. She saw its darkness and did not die. She saw herself, and chose to live.

  So bear with her now, not in pity or forgiveness – those were never qualities she herself possessed or expected in others – but in respect for the courage she showed when everything about herself seemed dark.

  Was Henbane going mad? Many thought it
, and some, encouraged by Lucerne, dared say it. But Henbane herself, knowing it was almost true and that her paws took her close to the very edge of the darkness she saw, fearful as the pup that once she was, had the courage to pause, and think, and begin to act.

  Hence her muttering, hence her vagrancy; hence as well the fact that even those sideem who said she veered to madness dared not yet deny her sovereignty. While Lucerne watched, and waited, hoped, and began to plot her end, Henbane dared to do the hardest thing anymole can do. Broken, vulnerable, despairing, weak, old, hurting, with nowhere yet to go, she dared start life again.

  But how? In a most extraordinary and courageous way. The Mistress of the Word dared cast the Word from off herself, and she did it by living in her mind one final time the vile traditions she had been taught, first by her mother Charlock, then by her father Rune, and forcing herself to see them for what they were.

  To make sense of Henbane’s tragedy a mole of the Stone, used to light and love and pleasant ways, must dare to travel back in time as Henbane did and learn how the Word was made in those distant years before the tunnels of Whern had heard the sound of the paws of mole.

  Long had they waited for their time, with but the sound of chill water to drip the millennia away.

  Blizzard snows come early above Whern, violent and heavy, and at the very dawn and beginning of its dubious celebrity, its fells were blanketed in white with just chill wind enough to stir the stiff, dead matt grass tops, and whisper warnings of the harsh winter centuries to come.

  It was soon after such a fall, indeed on Longest Night itself, that Scirpus first led his disciples, who numbered twenty-four, to the very edge of Whern where, under the overhang of Kilnsey Crag, he left them sheltering and went on alone.

  There, more dead of starvation than alive, more despairing than hopeful, his disciples first heard the rush and roar of subterranean water, and the graceful whine of the limestone wind as they awaited his return on a day of unnatural light and dark portents. Waterfalls froze, rocks and moles had shadows, yet the sun never shone; an unaccountable fear fell among the disciples.

  That day which marks the start of Longest Night, when the season came to that threshold which marks a change towards light once more, Scirpus journeyed on alone up into those tunnels, to find a place to pray and seek guidance. Guidance he must have found of a most sinister kind, for he made his way without getting lost into the heart of the High Sideem, and from there took the dangerous unknown route to the great chamber on the far side of which, beyond the lake in whose dark light it is eternally reflected, rises the Rock of the Word. There he bathed in the chill waters and after due meditation and ascetic subjugation, had the first of his twelve revelations of the Word, from which the Book of the Word itself came.

  These twelve revelations were known as the Twelve Cleave of the Word, and disciples of the Word believe they were scrivened for Scirpus’s eyes alone across the face of the Rock after which, he having learned them, they faded away. For twelve days, with only the icy water of the lake for sustenance, Scirpus stayed before the Rock, and on each day witnessed the revelation of a cleave. It is said that for each day Scirpus remained before the Rock one of his disciples died. Even as he talked a disciple might suddenly seem to stare, his mouth still open with the word he was about to speak, his body stiff and cold; his eyes unshut. Dead.

  Twenty-four had reached Kilnsey alive with Scirpus, but by the time he returned to them, his knowledge of the Book of the Word completed, only twelve remained. But worse. To survive, the living twelve had eaten their dead comrades.

  The survivors he led back to the High Sideem where, one by one, he took them before the Rock itself and there taught them a single cleave. On pain of death and before the Rock itself, each one swore his cleave would not be taught to a single one of the other twelve. Nor could a cleave be scrivened down. It would be a secret and unwritten Book, living in the memories of twelve chosen moles, or Keepers, with only one, the Master – Scirpus at first – knowing all its words and wisdom.

  The early history and lore of Whern is much concerned with the story of the need to protect this arcane knowledge, for clearly, potent though an unscrivened Book may be, it loses all power when part or all of its words are lost through death of mole.

  It was to protect the Word that the sideem and the grikes were formed. The sideems’ role was within Whern itself, the grikes’ role was to protect it from without.

  Scirpus ordered that moles be brought to Whern and trained in the cleave of their tutors, who were the Keepers of the Cleave. Each of the Twelve were to have novice sideem, who bit by bit would learn part of their Keeper’s cleave. In this way was knowledge of each cleave dispersed and made safe, yet nomole save the Master himself knew – or had power to know – all the twelve cleave that lived on through the sideem and Keepers.

  But the time must come when novices are made initiate, and so arose the rite of the anointing of the sideem, which among all the traditions of Whern is one of the most vile. Of that dangerous and ancient rite we shall have more to say.

  Scirpus knew that the sideem would need protection from their enemies, the followers of the Stone led then by the scribemoles of distant Uffington. In those days they were more powerful and active than they later became, and persecuted the Scirpuscans even to the very portals of Whern itself. It was to protect the sideem that Scirpus made the grikes.

  Many are the legends of how the grikes were made, but most agree that they are a race he spawned himself upon a female culled from the nearby system of Grysdale Lathe. The female was his consort, his release, and among the pups she had (all but this one denied by Scirpus) was one touched vilely by the Word. A mutant throwback to some monster strain, deformed and horrible; but his filthy blood was strong. They named him Grike and Scirpus trained him in the killing arts.

  His intelligence was cunning more than clever, but his loyalty knew no bounds and to him, to satisfy his infernal lusts, captive females were sent from the systems nearby. Then worse: corrupted by stories of power and perversion up in Whern, drawn by fascinations whose basis is still hidden and unknown outside the scrivenings of Whern, females came of their own accord to mate with the beast called Grike. And in them he spawned a ghastly family of moles, squat and lustful, of talons merciless and with a creed that said, “Right is the Word and right are we that follow it”.

  Grike’s sons were the first generation of grikes, and from his seed, all too recognisable to this very day in many who despise the blood they bear, all other grikes did come.

  Mutant were they, of the blood of Scirpus, of the fell darkness of Whern; born of a rapine, cruel heritage whose only credits are loyalty and obedience to the Word and the sideem they were first nurtured to serve.

  All this Henbane had always known, though by her day the role of sideem and grike had spread and changed. She had been told it as a story that glorified great Scirpus, and brought honour and a fitting menace to the Word. But now, thinking of it once again, she saw it all afresh and understood that as a speck of poison may befoul the deepest pool so had those two groups of moles, one of blinkered disciples and the other of ruthless servants, befouled moledom’s once peaceful and pleasant land.

  It was on all this horrid past that Henbane now began to dwell, grateful only perhaps that, so far as she could tell, grike blood mingled not within her own. Small consolation, though, in the deepest of her tormented night. For her blood was Rune’s and dread Charlock’s and her inheritance was Scirpus’s own realm.

  But if she was corrupted by it, what was her escape? And where to? These questions were, as yet, unanswerable. For now she was preoccupied with the realisation that the tradition she had inherited, the dark arts she had learned, had made her make evil the one pure thing she felt she had ever made: Lucerne.

  For corrupt him she had. With her body she did, encircling him in her own incestuous pride, letting him pass through puphood to youth, and then towards adulthood as one who touched her and knew her as on
ly lovers should. Doing to him what her parents had done to her.

  But worse she knew about herself. As Lucerne had grown, but even before his first speech had come, she chose as his tutor, in full knowledge of what she did, Terce, most senior of the Keepers, and most odious.

  Terce liked young moles. Indeed, the sideem that served him were always especially young, all clever, some beautiful. But it was as if his sideem career had been directed by the Word itself towards the sole object and purpose of preparing him as tutor for one as full of the potential for evil as Lucerne.

  “Yet he was not evil before that mole first touched him...” whispered Henbane in her new-found guilt for, among her worse memories of things she did that could never be undone, was that night when knowing what she did she yielded her only pup to Terce....

  The folios that record the coming of Terce to Whern have been destroyed, probably by his own paw. The minutes of the meeting of the Keepers wherein he was made Twelfth elect have been destroyed – by his paw. All scrivenings relating to Terce’s role as Keeper, and tutor to Lucerne, have been “mislaid’; his work, too.

  But in outline at least his past is known, though his parents’ names are lost. Of humble birth in nearby Cray, north of Whern, he came. Chosen by his predecessor he learnt the hardest cleave, which is the twelfth, in but eight days. To curb his ambition and his pride he was given the task of sorting out the indulgences of the grike guardmoles of Wharfedale, and, fatally, his single request for a mole to help him was granted. The mole he chose was Lathe, the perfect subordinate. Cruel and unscrupulous was he and, with no more desire but to serve the mole who gave him power, most reliable. Oh yes, those two fulfilled their task and brought the grikes back in control. But worse, they gained dominion over them, some say with Rune’s agreement, others say without. The fact was, though, that in the long days when Henbane, with Wrekin as her general and Weed as her sideem aide, conquered moledom’s southern part, Terce it was who gained power among the Keepers. Clever Terce it was who stayed clear at the time of Henbane’s accession and Rune’s demise, and consolidated his hold and was the first to offer his services to Henbane.