Duncton Quest (21 page)

So Tryfan told how, long ago, he had learnt from Boswell the directions of the seven Ancient Systems, and of the Stones that mark not only their location, but the communal ways between.

Each system has its own feel which is like a distant call, almost a vibration, he explained, and within the orbit of the Seven Systems each one could be felt, the changes in their relative strengths and tones being a scribemole’s guide to where he was, and where he was heading.

Of the Seven Systems only one, the grim westerly system of Siabod, lies beyond the reaches of the three Rivers. These are the Thames, river of light and dark; the Severn, river of danger, which a mole must cross to reach Siabod; and the Trent, river of no return, beyond which, Tryfan had been told, lay territories unrecorded even in the Rolls of the Systems, except for those stories associated with Scirpus and the system of Whern.

Tryfan remembered his mother Rebecca telling him of the North and tried to remember it for Spindle now: “Nomole can know what lies in the northern ranges, a land bleak of worm and dank of soil, where if moles live they know not of the Stone, or of the sun in summer. There the ground freezes up with cold and the tunnels, if they could be made, would burst with ice and crush a mole as if he never was.”

Bracken had said the same, adding that it was a place of giants and of fear. Yet a mole’s heart quickens to hear the stories of the North, where the First Moles lived, who were made of the sparks hammered out by Ballagan when he smote the Stone in his time of doubt – smitings that finally produced the seven Stillstones; and the many legends of giants and snakes and natural dangers like the ice and the roaring mud; and the rain that eats a mole’s skin and poisons his soul.

“If mole has been there, he or she has not come back to tell of it,” Boswell told him, “but there is not a system that does not have its moles who have left to find the North, or legends of moles that have come back.”

Of all this Spindle knew something, but was glad to crouch low in the May night and hear Tryfan’s account.

“And what of the places you were told of as a youngster?” asked Tryfan in his turn, when he had finished.

“I heard of Siabod, that’s a system and a half that is. Wouldn’t want to go there in a hurry! And the others of the Seven, including your own Duncton Wood. But what used to give me nightmares when I was a pup was my father’s stories of the Empty Quarter known as the Wen which Boswell himself mentioned before we left Uffington.”

Tryfan nodded, settling down, for it sounded as if Spindle knew something of that and desired to tell of it.

“Yes,” continued Spindle, “that’s a place where the great Thames is swallowed underground and nomole lives.”

“Nomole?” said Tryfan, surprised, for he had heard that mole did live there, legendary mole.

“Well, that is to say, nomole lives there now I should think. Might have done in the past. Systems come and go. Sometimes moles used to come to Uffington from the distant east and they had tales of the Wen.”

“What is it exactly?” asked Tryfan.

“A twofoot system, not for mole. A place of rushing sucking water and disease. Rats black as night and the roaring owl, and fire at night so the sky is lurid with it. Nomole there!”

“Bracken said there might be,” said Tryfan. “He said...” and suddenly an early memory of his father came to him and, in the darkness, Tryfan smiled a little sadly, for his father had meant much to him, and when he was young had told him a tale or two up by Duncton’s great Stone on such nights as this one.

“My father believed it was the place of the roaring owl and all the roaring owl ways lead there, and they have tunnels larger than the greatest Stone and there is the march of twofoots all day long. There the old moles live who speak the old language, and everymole can scribe —”

“Everymole?”

“Yes. There are no scribemoles, but everymole must learn. From there the scribemoles first came as the grikes have come now, to interpret the Stone to mole and teach of the Silence that may be found.”

“So your ancestors came from the Empty Quarter!” said Spindle, a little light-heartedly.

“And yours.”

“And our cousins may still be there! With roaring owls for friends, and rats for good company!”

“You may laugh,” said Tryfan, “but did not Boswell say we might go “even to the Empty Quarter”?”

“Yes, but....”

Tryfan smiled in the dark.

“But nothing,” he said with as strong and humourless a voice as possible. “I hope that you remember your task is to keep with me.”

“But, Tryfan... you’re not...?”

“The Stone will guide us,” said Tryfan with a maddening calm, “and it will lead us to where we must go.”

“It’s getting cold,” said Spindle to change the subject. “When will we set off, and for where?”

“Dawn for Buckland,” said Tryfan distantly. “Dawn...” and he hunched forward, snout a little to one side, moonlight in the fur on his back, eyes enshadowed, his voice strange suddenly.

Just below them there was a short bark and a shrill

squeal, and a fox paused for a moment, rabbit in jaw, and stared up in their direction before slinking into the darkness of a ditch. Downslope to the right a tawny owl called sharply and both moles instinctively moved nearer together, flank to flank.

Tryfan shivered suddenly, frightened perhaps by the prospects of journey and responsibility before him. Spindle tried to comfort him.

“Boswell said this was your task. I heard it. Good Boswell said I was to go with you, and I shall, though I am shaken with fear sometimes and won’t be much good to you when you need strength, or quickness, or rituals. Won’t be much good at all, I’m afraid. But I can find worms, I can make a tunnel the proper way, and, and... I’ll never leave you, Tryfan, so long as you need me.”

And he paused apologetically, as if this, which was all a mole could give, was not enough.

“You have forgotten what Boswell saw as your greatest strength,” said Tryfan, his voice stronger for Spindle’s encouragement and trust. “You have not mentioned your faith in the Stone; that may, at times, be your greatest gift to me.”

“I have that and will not lose it.”

“Whatever happens?”

“No, never,” said Spindle firmly. “Not so long as the memory of Boswell and what he said to me lives, not ever. Now, Tryfan, you had best sleep through these last hours of the night.” And together they crept underground to their burrows, and slept the light and troubled sleep of uncertain travellers on the eve of a journey, who do not know their journey’s purpose, or where its end might be.

Chapter Nine

“What are your names and whither are you bound?”

The voice that challenged them came from the shadows of a wide part of the communal way down which they were travelling. It was from a confident male, and one who knew how to take a firm stance without unnecessary aggression. Tryfan went on ahead of Spindle and saw that the mole was powerful of haunch and that his fur caught the entrance light healthily. His gaze was indifferent and untroubled, that of a mole who feels secure in the organisation behind him, but there was something flat and emotionless about his voice which reminded Tryfan immediately of the guardmoles who had held them briefly at Uffington.

It would have been a dim mole who could not see that he had no intention of letting travellers pass by without checking on what their business was and where they were going. It seemed certain that they had reached the edges of the notorious Buckland system....

They had learnt much of Buckland in the eight days since they had left their place of refuge and gone forward on their journey once more, and more, too, of the grikes’ cruel ways. All of it confirmed the grim report which the scribemole Brevis, Spindle’s master, had made before he had disappeared and probably been killed during the grike invasion of the Holy Burrows.

It seemed that when the plagues came, Buckland, a worthy enough place though Stoneless, had been hard hit and many had died and been sealed in. When the grikes took it over they decided to use it as one of their key systems, mainly because of its convenient location at a junction of ways leading to north and south, and to east and west. Just a little to the north of it was a crossing over the Thames, made by twofoots but reputedly ancient, a way moles and other creatures could use in relative safety from roaring owls, often a hazard at river crossing points. Roaring owls are jealous of such points and guard them well, crossing and re-crossing them constantly and blinding moles with the light of their eyes, or fuming them, if they fail to crush them on their onward rush. So a system with a safe crossing over a major river often prospered, and such seemed to be the case with Buckland.

They were informed that Buckland was to be a centre for guardmole training and much clearing and tunnel repair had been done in preparation for its inauguration at Midsummer as a working system. Indeed, so the rumours went, Henbane of Whern herself was to visit the system then and preside over the rituals the grikes favoured for Midsummer’s eve.

“Rituals?” Tryfan had asked.

But the responses to
that
question among the moles they met were furtive and uneasy, muttered whispers, fearful glances. Aye, rituals, snoutings and killings and that. Punishments and Atonements. From Midsummer on, they learnt, Stone believers were to be outcast.

“Outcast?”

“Where do you two come from that you ask such questions?” somemole Tryfan was treating had asked suspiciously.

“Herbalists like us are more concerned with finding plants than worrying ourselves over-much with these goings on,” Tryfan had replied carelessly, digging his talons in extra hard to the mole whose shoulder he was healing. “We’ve come from east of Fyfield way and the grikes have not done much there yet.”

“Eastward’ll be the last push, praise the Word!” said the mole. “Ouch! That hurts, healer!”

“Relax mole!” said Tryfan. “Now, tell me about being outcast. We feel we’ve been such all our lives, eh Spindle?”

“Yes Benet,” replied Spindle, using the name they had decided to give Tryfan.

“Outcast moles may be killed by any who meet them, or taken to guardmoles who have rights to kill them as they will. Not to do so is a snouting offence in itself. To be outcast is to be dead, for a mole cannot hide from the Word,” said Tryfan’s patient grimly. “I wouldn’t want to be a Stone follower and anywhere near Buckland at Midsummer. It’d be a snouting for sure!”

So they had journeyed towards Buckland, bit by bit learning what they could of the grikes. So that when they finally arrived there and were challenged by the guard-mole at the entrance to the Buckland system Tryfan had their answers ready....

“Of Fyfield am I,” said Tryfan, choosing a system near Duncton which he knew to be extensive and where the plagues had been especially bad. He knew his accent gave him away as a mole from the systems east of Uffington but the chances of meeting a Fyfield mole who might challenge him were probably low. If he did he would just have to bluff it out by pretending to be from the outliers – those areas adjacent to major systems in which more idiosyncratic moles like to live. As it was, the guardmole did not seem to react or to wish to question his claim so he continued with his story. “My name is Benet. My companion is a vagrant and simple, but of use to me.”

“Of use?” asked the guardmole.

Tryfan shrugged. “A healer am I and I know of herbs, and he finds them well. And what is more —” Tryfan laughed – “he finds worms and I can eat them well!”

A brief obligatory smile went across the guardmole’s face at this pleasantry and so, seemingly satisfied, he turned from Tryfan to Spindle.

“Your name?”

Spindle gawped at him stupidly, wiped his snout messily on his flank, peered at his talons and said, “They do call me Spindle. They do call him Benet. What’s your name?”

The guardmole recoiled a little at this rudeness but then, dismissing it, said to Tryfan, “Well, Benet, you have done wisely to come here. Healers, genuine healers that is, are in short supply and always needed when the Word has come. Are you of the Word?”

“Never was much of one for all that business, the Stone, the Word, and that,” he said slowly, adding indifferently, “It’s all one to me.”

“Well, you are obviously not initiate,” said the guard-mole. “But the eldrenes will see to that! A mole who is not of the Word lives against the Word and that is wrong, and by Midsummer it will be an outcasting for moles who have not Atoned. You have time enough. We don’t hold it against southerners to have been of the Stone if they’re willing to change their ways and learn the Word, may its power be praised.”

The mole paused, looking from one of them to the other.

“You always travel together?”

“Yes,” said Tryfan, puzzled by the question. “Why, is...?”

The mole smiled, a little too positively, and, shrugging, raised a paw and said, “It’s nothing, no, no, nothing.” He paused again. “You’re a healer, you say?”

“Yes,” said Tryfan.

“Of Fyfield?”

“I have said so.”

“And where have you come from?”