Duncton Quest (13 page)

“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.

“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 thorns 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.”