Duncton Found (36 page)

“What of the third pup?”

Sleekit shook her head.

“I know not. We left him in that dreadful place with Rune and Henbane to fight over him. I know not....”

“But you have an idea?”

“I know only that if he survived he would be raised a sideem, and because of his birth he would be favoured. If he was favoured and well trained, then Tryfan’s son would be thy enemy, and the Stone’s.”

Around them, suddenly, the windsound strengthened, and there was the rumble and roar of dark sound as if other moles were in that place, threatening moles.

“Sleekit,” whispered Beechen, “I think that mole is alive. I feel he is alive. And I think... I think I know where I must go after Duncton.”

“Not Whern, Beechen!” said Sleekit urgently. “Never there. For they shall kill you and moledom shall die with you.”

“Not Whern...” repeated Beechen faintly, but whether he was simply echoing what she said, or whether he had another place in mind, she could not tell.

The light in the tunnels had faded, and there was the sense of dusk about the place.

“We must go back to the surface,” said Sleekit with a shiver. “We must continue here another time.”

“No, no,” said Beechen, “we must continue
now.
And you shall come with me despite your fears. I shall show you the way beyond them now. I know the way. I have been learning it from the first hour of my birth. Come now....”

Yet even then he lingered, as if reluctant to take up the challenge that he felt lay before him.

“Tryfan told me that he loved Henbane.”

“It is true. I know my Mistress much loved
him.
In their union I saw the first good, the first light, I ever saw in Whern. Tryfan opened a portal in Henbane’s heart which I believed could not, would not, be closed again. She... she...” Sleekit lowered her snout.

“Yes?” said Beechen.

“She was not as evil as she seemed. She did evil, but she was not all evil. And always, always, there was in her what other moles – moles that might be good, followers as well – often did not quite have. She had
life,
Beechen, and seeing that and witnessing what I did when Tryfan loved her, and how she bore their young with courage I have never seen before nor known myself, I knew that moles who
live,
which is to say moles who have courage to experience what comes their way, may finally, whatever else they may have done, find their snout turning towards the Stone’s light.”

“Others think her evil.”

Sleekit made a strange reply to this. She said, “Others once thought my Mayweed to be a mole of no account. I have loved him as I loved her, despite what all others say.”

“Perhaps you have an eye for the light of truth,” whispered Beechen.

Sleekit said nothing to this but instead declared with uncharacteristic passion, “I am fearful for them both. What will become of my Mayweed? What has become of Henbane?”

There was no reply but in the windsound, dark and light, of the tunnels about them.

“I often think you know more than you let others know,” said Sleekit.

It did not seem to be Beechen, a young adult, who replied.

“I may know more fear than they, it is my heritage and my task,” said the Stone Mole, his eyes bright in the darkness about them, his form almost lost in the chalky shadows where he stanced.

“Now, you have told me of the dark sound of Whern. What of this place, and the sounds we have heard all day? Tell me!”

But all Sleekit could do was to repeat the little she had been told by Mayweed and Tryfan, about a place Bracken had called the Chamber of Dark Sound, wherein moles had once died in their pursuit of Mandrake. Stories of times past before the plagues, fearful stories.

“Then let us face these fears and find that chamber!” said Beechen boldly.

So, with dark shadows all about, they turned into those side tunnels from which the dark sound came loudest. By slow degrees the tunnels deepened and the surface noise of the rousing wind seemed further off. Yet in places light from a rising moon began to reach down to them through the cracks and crevices of the surface above, and the windsound and dark sound in the tunnels increased and grew more troubled until at last Sleekit was forced to pause and let Beechen take the lead, for her courage was deserting her again.

Whatever lay in the tunnels or chamber ahead was echoing their pawsteps back to them, but all turned and distorted and painful to the ear.

“It is like the sound I heard the Rock of the Word send out,” said Sleekit.

“Then follow close and let us face it,” said Beechen.

A short time after, the tunnel widened and Beechen led Sleekit into that fabled chamber into which nomole had gone since those distant days when Mandrake had wandered madly there.

Great beyond sensing. High beyond seeing. Long beyond telling. But far ahead of them across its width was the rising, shining, flinty and scrivened face of the chamber’s west wall. At its base, centrally, but dwarfed by its size, was the portal that led on to the whispering sinewy sounds of the Chamber of Roots.

But this was no ordinary portal. It had been delved such that rising from it, all around, across the whole face of the wall, was the image of the cruel open beak of the owl whose image was formed by the carvings or scrivenings which made the dark sound.

The flinty wall shone and reflected dark light, and the slightest pawstep or breath seemed instantly to be echoed back from its scrivenings, all distorted and fearful.

Beechen stared across the chamber in awe and wonder but then, seeing the portal, he said without a moment’s hesitation, “That is our way. That is where we must go.”

“But the dark sound...” whispered Sleekit. “It will grow worse as we go nearer to it. It is like the Rock of the Word, made to disorientate a mole, and then destroy him.”

There was no doubt that she was right. For as their eyes grew used to the strange light of the place they saw that scattered across the floor were the gaunt remains of moles who had been in the place before them, which they guessed must be the bodies of henchmoles who, in times past, had pursued Bracken and Mandrake. They saw then, too, that the portal was partially blocked with fallen flints and more bodies of moles, but all broken and crushed.

“Do not be afraid,” said Beechen, reaching out a reassuring paw to Sleekit. “This is the way we must go.”

Even as they started to move, and their paws scuffed the hard uneven floor, dark sound reverberated back at them from the wall and to Sleekit it seemed that the air of the chamber was full of the violence of things hurled by a wind whose sole purpose was to destroy her spirit and break her body.

Only the form of Beechen ahead of her kept her from losing herself in the confusion of sound, only the touch of his paw kept her on course. And then he stopped suddenly, as if he heard something beyond the dark sound, and something even more fearful. Then, horror in her heart, she heard it too.

Desperate pawsteps, and a desperate crying voice. A mole in terrible desolate fear. A mole lost who called a name.

“What is the name he calls?” said Beechen, turning to her.

Louder it came, nearer, from the very portal towards which they struggled, pawsteps and a cry, lost and nearly hopeless now.

Then she knew the name it called. It was her own.

“Sleekit! Sleekit, help me now! Help me for I am lost, lost... Sleekit... help....”

Then slowly through the portal he came, pushing a way through the death and destruction there, now with the strength of desperation, now feebly with the weakness of hopelessness. Mayweed. Route-finder. Lost. Speaking in a voice that was not his normal one, yet more nearly his own than any he had ever had. Poor Mayweed.

Sleekit looked, and looked away in fear. She did not have the strength to go further across the Chamber of Dark Sound and help him.

“Go to him!” Beechen cried to her, as she knew he would.

Again she looked, again stared helplessly, again she looked away.

“I cannot help him,” she whispered. “The sound is too dark for me.”

She could not move. It was like a freezing day in winter, when the cold is so penetrating it stops a mole’s mind and he sees all move slowly and in silence beyond his power of control. Thus she watched as Mayweed stumbled into the Chamber of Dark Sound and saw as he staggered here and there along the edge of the scrivened wall, crying out in agony, seeking with his paws to stop the sounds that were destroying him, yet still calling for her. He seemed blinded by the noise, for he did not see them where they stanced immobile watching him.

Until before her eyes poor Mayweed slowed and collapsed and began to cry, terrible cries that were like those of a pup lost from everymole. A pup lost in darkness. Sleekit looked away again.

“Help him,” commanded Beechen then. “One chance more you have.”

Help him? So Beechen must have spoken – though so strange that chamber’s sounds, and so confusing, she felt it was the scrivens of the wall that spoke.

But help him she could not. Her only saving in that place was Beechen’s proximity, as if about him was a sense of Silence that gave her space just to survive. To leave him and go to Mayweed was too much for her to do.

“Help him,” Beechen said again.

Mayweed was a lost mole now, lost in some memory of puphood, lost again in that place in the Slopeside of Buckland from which once he had only just been rescued, and from whose darkness his life had ever since been one long striving to escape.

“Sleekit, he was lost, and found, and now is lost again.
I
cannot save him, I can save nomole except that knowing the Stone through me they may save themselves. For this have I come, to show how we may help each other. You and Mayweed are as one, so find the courage to leave me here and go to him. Use all your training, all your love, and go to him where so long ago his mother left him. Help him. Teach him as he has taught so many others it can be done. Here he is weak. Here he is dying. Through you he can survive and be stronger still that one day he shall have the strength for his final task, which is to guide Tryfan into a darkness beyond imagining.”

“His final task?” whispered Sleekit, knowing that if she took her eyes off Mayweed now she would not have the courage to look at him again.

“As a mole is loved so shall he love, so show him the way now, Sleekit. I think he had come in search of us. He came to find us and nomole knew better than he the dangers of this place or the torments it might bring. Despite that he has dared come and it has nearly killed him. For you and me he did it. His love has given you the strength to help him now. Use it, return it to him.”

Then in that dreadful place Beechen stood aside, and for a time Sleekit felt the full force of dark sound upon her and thought that she would die. Yet somehow discipline and faith came to her, one learnt of the Word, the other discovered of the Stone, until with Mayweed’s cry weakening before her she found the strength to advance through the blizzard of darkness that beset her, and go to him.

“My dear, my dear...” she said, and she reached him, and put her paws to him, and comforted him, and like a pup he wept and cried that he was lost.

“Yes, help him so,” said Beechen, and with love she did, and held him where he had fallen, and encircled him, and whispered safety to him, and the security of love.

Then all about them the dark sound began to die, and peace fell on that place, and from the eyes of Beechen came a light of love that seemed caught in the scrivens of the walls of the chamber, a light that was the light of Silence.

Then the Stone Mole went to those two striving moles and touched each of them, and they felt a healing in their hearts and knew that they were safe, and the chamber held fear for them no more.

“Follow me,” said Beechen then, and weakly they did, and it seemed that each pawstep they made, each piece of debris they cleared to make a path back through the portal, brought forth a gentle sound from the scrivened wall above.

They passed through into the Chamber of Roots, and paused there within sight of the roots that formed a vertical and ever-shifting screen through which only moles of faith might go.

Mayweed, half supported by Sleekit, said nothing, but stared at the roots which were lit, it seemed, by the luminescent tendrils of the smallest of their number high in the chamber’s roof, carrying some light of their own, or taking from the surface above something of the moonlight there.

Beechen seemed barely interested in the roots, but Sleekit noticed that when, briefly, his gaze fell on them they stilled, absolutely, and all sound went, and an enchantment of Silence fell over them and the chamber they commanded.

Beechen sighed and said, “Come, we have heard and seen enough. This chamber can wait its time once more when Duncton shall be found again. Our tasks are different. Come, we must go to the surface and make our way to Barrow Vale, where our friends are concerned for us.”

They reached the surface, and, before they set off downslope, they turned back to touch the moonstruck Stone and all stanced together in the night with the Stone’s light upon them.