Duncton Quest (87 page)

Only when they began to recover did they learn something of the system they had come to, and it was not until Spindle was fit and well that they were really able to communicate with their hosts, for his training at the Holy Burrows made it easier for him to understand their language. Indeed, it is one of the great good chances of recent mole history that Spindle the Cleric was a member of the party that penetrated through the Wen and reached the moles who had been confined there so long. For he was able to record all that he saw and learn there before it was dispersed and gone forever
*
.

*
See
On the Extraordinary Discovery and History of the Wen Moles
, with an Appendix of Dunbar’s Prophecies scribed by Spindle of Seven Barrows.

It is enough now to say that the moles of the system Tryfan’s party discovered, or more accurately rediscovered, were the descendants of that small group of moles which had first travelled into the Wen with Dunbar himself centuries ago, following the historic schism and departure of Scirpus and Dunbar from Uffington.

Dunbar, taking the Scirpuscan revolt as the starting of a decline of the Stone in moledom, and believing that only the Stone Mole could reverse this fall from faith and peace, had resolved to preserve the old ways in a system that might not be corrupted by moles of the Word, whom he believed would one day take power in moledom. He established this community of moles near the very heart of the Wen, on a hill that overlooks its central wormless part. Bounded when he first came by the Wen to the south, but with open fields to the north, it had seemed as good a site as any, and better than most.

Before his death, Dunbar had made a number of prophecies of the future, which he had scribed and left as texts to be preserved by his followers.

There were twenty-one separate prophecies, but the three most significant were these: first, that the Holy Burrows of Uffington would fall into decline and the scribemoles be “disbanded’; second, when the time was right, the Stone Mole (an ancient mole belief in its own right) would come out of the Wen and make himself known to allmole; third, for moledom to be spiritually safe for the future, it would need but one solitary mole to find the courage to hear the full Silence of the Stone. Many might strive for the Silence, and some begin to hear it, but only when one was able to know it full in his heart would all be able to reach into that great light in the Stone.

At some point early on, the vows of celibacy that many of Dunbar’s moles had taken had necessarily been allowed to lapse. It may be that some of his followers were only novitiates or clerics rather than ordained scribemoles, and their natural will had prevailed. What had been intended as a male community of scribemoles evolved into a mixed system, and one in which, uniquely in moledom,
all
moles learned scribing, and indeed were required to scribe texts of their own.

By then the system had become cut off, first to the north east, then to the north and finally to the west, except for tunnels leading north to an area of wilderness called Hampstead, to which, for several centuries ensuing, Dunbar moles of both sexes went to find mates. The Dunbar moles must have been strong and fierce in those years, for they preserved their identity well, and the very high standards of order and discipline set by Dunbar himself, and the wise Rule he scribed for the good conduct of his system, were maintained for many decades.

Perhaps, too, because the system was under threat from the Wen itself and all the predatory creatures that it spews forth, the Dunbar moles were alert and their numbers kept at the right level to maintain order and belief in the Stone.

Everymole had to learn scribing, everymole had to make texts, and for two centuries an extraordinary flowering of scribing took place in that system, which all the time was becoming more isolated and unknown. Stories of its doings came out only from the Hampstead system, but as the Hampstead moles were under pressure from the growing canker of the Wen, real knowledge of the Wen moles was finally lost. Yet stories of them passed into myth and legend, which preserved only the simplest fragments of the past: that there were moles in the Wen, ancient moles, and that from among their number one good day the legendary Stone Mole would come.

So, hidden away, all but forgotten, the Dunbar moles lived out their lives, a system unique in moledom in teaching that scribing was a thing all moles could and must do.

This being so, and the Rule being strict, the language and liturgy was preserved as it had been, not evolving as a purely spoken language does by contact with different moles, different languages, and usages. It evolved, however, of itself, which was what made the language especially hard quickly to understand, even for the few moles remaining who, like Tryfan and Spindle, had some textual contact with it.

It is to the credit of the Dunbar moles that in more recent centuries there had been efforts to reach the outside world but these had failed, for no such contact is known. Whatever expeditions set off must have perished in the tunnels of the Wen.

However, more recently, perhaps less than ten generations before Tryfan’s coming, an insidious and finally fatal enemy had crept upon the Dunbar system, and one they could no nothing about. Perhaps it was pollution of the Wen’s water or poison in worm, perhaps some inherent problem with a population of moles into which new blood was no longer coming: whatever the cause, fertility decreased. Not only did the total number of litters decline, but the number of pups in each litter fell and gradually the population began to age so that the few youngsters who were reared found themselves surrounded by older and often bitter pupless males and females. Strange and sterile attitudes developed which increased the population decline. The Rule was made suddenly stricter so that youngsters were forced to pair with the oldest moles, while jealousies of the few successful pairs became rife. Inevitably internecine feuds developed and a period of shocking violence ensued in which, most dreadfully, the youngsters were pitched against the numerous old and many died.

The system of Dunbar, a system of which its great founder had predicted that one distant day from out of it the Stone Mole would come, had begun to kill itself.

Somehow peace came to the broken system, but then a worse trouble came: plague. The same plagues that had beset the rest of moledom somehow reached the Wen moles. Nomole knows how. Tragically it took more of the younger moles than the old, and left a system desolate and sad and without the possibility of recovery.

But what of its faith in the Stone, and what of its worship? The system had no Stone, only memories passed down by generations. It had a place of worship though, a high point on the hill beneath which the system’s pride and glory lay close guarded: its Library.

There the texts of the Wen moles were kept, a Library quite different from Uffington’s for it preserved texts known in no other system, and on subjects never known to mole before. For there, hidden, almost lost, seemingly without hope of preservation, was the work of centuries, work which marked the birth, and the flowering, the glory and the great delight, the decline and the sadness: works of spring, of summer and of autumn, great works in forms never developed at the Holy Burrows where scribemoles were secretive and overly religious, and few ever scribed for the pleasure of it. Texts of poetry, of stories, of philosophy, of imagination and even of natural history, for the Wen moles were the first to scribe of the twofoots, and one courageous Wen mole even made a study of roaring owls.

On the surface above the Library where these unique texts were kept, for centuries past, the rituals had been spoken by moles taught to face to the distant west where, as their founding brothers had told them the Holy Burrows of fabled Uffington lay. That way, too, the great Stones of the seven Ancient Systems rose: of Avebury, of Uffington, of Caer Caradoc and of Siabod; of Rollright, of Fyfield and nearest of all, of Duncton Wood. These names, in their ancient forms, were preserved and spoken, and the rituals had engendered a great longing in that system to know those Stones. With that longing went the belief that, one day, the Wen moles would find a leader able to take them back to the good place from which they had first come. That leader might perhaps be the Stone Mole himself, or rise up when the Stone Mole had come.

When Tryfan and his companions arrived the system was but a shadow of its former self. Whole sections had been abandoned and such few moles as survived lived in burrows and tunnels far too extensive for them, as lost and bereft as the last few leaves that cling here and there to the branches of an empty beech tree through the cold months of winter. But in that, the system was no different from many of the plague-desolated systems moles such as Spindle and Tryfan had already seen.

By the time Tryfan and his companions came to the Wen, the final death of the Dunbar moles had almost come. One fecund female alone remained, and she the youngest of all the moles remaining. There were other females it is true, but they were dried and bitter pupless hags, jealous of the younger one, the more so because she herself was the single offspring of the last successful Wen pairing, that between Leine and Paston, the old male who had followed Starling from the chamber and persuaded her to come and meet his “douchter”.

Bitter the feuds between the ancient males who ogled his “douchter’s” flanks and fur as she matured; bitterness mixed with longing, for few of them had ever mated, perhaps few of them could. But even if they could, were they fertile? Whatmole would know? But that poor young female had had to choose a mate among that aged rabble of bitter males and finally had gone to the Library Hill, and did what she had been taught to do, which was to pray to the Stone and seek guidance.

After which she declared that that guidance said “wait” and no male mole was bold enough to come forward and insist she abide by the new Rule and choose one of them.

But wait for what? Wait for a lifetime? Wait for a miracle perhaps.

Two seasons she waited, hoping, despairing, and only her father, Paston, to protect her and talk to her. The males wouldn’t. The females chose not to. All hated her. Two seasons of waiting with the burden of that system’s future on her. Waiting....

It was into this lost and hopeless system that Tryfan’s group came, not knowing its history, nor understanding why the aged moles there soon eyed them as they did. Nor why young Starling was touched and harried by grey, aged paws, or why, even before they had recovered, ancient crabbed females smiled and fawned like youngsters over the recovering bodies of bemused and astonished Mayweed, and embarrassed Spindle. Pairing? How could that have crossed their tired minds and beset bodies? As for Tryfan, he was, virtually, ignored. Anymole could see he was dying, nomole had time for him when there were better opportunities to feud for.

So in the days following their arrival, far from showing any genuine interest in the four moles who had arrived, or in moledom beyond the Wen, Dunbar’s system had become so closed and inward-looking that all the tunnels hummed with was talk and gossip of who the newcomers might like, and lies and intrigue, until finally Mayweed and Starling had to stand their ground to give Spindle peace to tend as best he could to Tryfan. He, now, was rarely conscious, but lay rank with illness and festering wounds, unable even to move. But by him poor Spindle stayed night and day, watching over him, cleaning him, and asking again and again for herbs or a healer or
help.
Anything but the rabble of old desperate moles trying to paw himself, Mayweed and Starling and offering their crabbed and nauseous favours.

Perhaps by then Spindle had learnt enough to have guessed the truth of the Dunbar moles, for he was able to exercise his knowledge of the rituals of the old systems to summon a council of moles in the chamber adjacent to the Library, invoking some spurious rule or other he made up, with the express purpose of asking them to stop their squabbling and appoint somemole with a knowledge of the surface who could find herbs to heal Tryfan. For without them he would soon be dead.

So, charging Mayweed and Starling with this task of persuasion, for he did not wish to leave Tryfan alone, he had left them to it. But the council had merely talked and talked, suggesting nothing. It was then that Starling had finally lost her temper and stormed off, to be followed by Paston.

She was doubtful of his intentions but, being Starling, and strong, and fed up, and (most of all) willing to try anything to find help for Tryfan, she had gone along with him.

He took her downslope westward, by surface and by tunnel, but having only established that it was his daughter Starling was to meet she had no idea what to expect. Only that she must be old, because he was
decrepit,
but she might be nice.

So on they went, until they reached a humble entrance to a humble tunnel and went down it. Paston called ahead, to warn his daughter of their approach, and then, indicating to Starling to stay where she was, he entered a chamber. Starling noted that the tunnels smelt good and sweet and were dry, simple, and new-made. This female, she decided, must be a mole after her own heart.