Duncton Quest (100 page)

Until no more scribemoles came, and that fastness beyond the Dark Peak became unknown to moles in the south, the source only of legend and story, myth and fear, as unexplored shadows always are.

Then from that unknown northern place came plague, like the stench of badger, dead, slow, and sure. Creeping on, unstoppable. And in its dire wake came grikes, unknown, faceless, feared, who spoke the Word and cowed moles and then killed them.

Of that we know. Of that we have seen. With that our hearts have withered, too, and wondered why, when the sun can shine and across a springtime field of grass a scented wind can run,
why
such darkness came and wheretofore.

But now, you moles who once said prayers for Bracken and Rebecca, and repeated them for Tryfan, travel north with him, go by the tunnels he follows, watch over him with your love, whisper blessings on him and those who travel with him: Mayweed, mole of courage, and Spindle, strange mole, wise mole, nervous for the moles he loves. Yet the one who witnessed Tryfan’s ordination to his task, and pledged himself as companion and helper, friend and follower.

Go with them beyond the Dark Peak, be fearful for them, and if your courage fails as they reach the very edge of Whern and you are afraid to travel on then wait for them, be ready for their return, for surely they will need your prayers and your good help for the completion of their task.

Yet while Tryfan pauses staring north at the fearsome rises where Whern begins, and before its darkness must finally descend, remember with him something of that journey north from Rollright in which, almost without knowing what he was doing, he put a hope into the hearts of many moles, and made them believe that soon now, not so long but that they could not wait for it with patience and forbearance, the Stone Mole would come.

Many are the systems that claim today Tryfan passed their way then. Many that tell of the healings he made. Many that feel they were once blessed by him. “Tryfan was here!” they say. They saw a mole afraid, who felt the loss of all he had seen and heard till then. They saw a mole humble, whose wisdom came out slow, and spoke only of peace and mindfulness, who asked the followers he met to hold back their talons from attack, to let the grikes be what they were. They saw a mole who was separated from his only mate, one he had hardly known at all; they saw a mole who understood the failures they had made because he suffered for his own.

They heard a mole who spoke of a system he loved, a home lost to him by plague and grike as theirs had been. They heard a mole speak of Boswell, the White Mole, who he believed was now in Whern and waiting for followers to show their faith. They heard a mole who knew the rhymes and rituals of the past, and who spoke them at their Stones, or their secret places, or simply in their burrows, simply and direct, as if they were sharing his private prayers with the Stone itself.

They knew a mole ordained at Uffington, the very last of his kind, a scribemole who taught scribing to those who would learn and did not make it a secret, mysterious thing at all.

When Tryfan passed their way followers flocked to him, and he spoke to them softly so that each felt it was to him or her he spoke alone. Yet when they asked what they should do he told them he was not worthy to tell them that, but that one worthier than he would come and he would be the Stone Mole;
he
would tell them.

Always while he spoke, Spindle the Cleric crouched nearby – a clever mole he! – and Mayweed, who made the youngsters laugh, and whose scalpskinned body and balded face could not hide the love and awe he felt for the scribemole he led north.

“Why don’t the grikes attack us?” Spindle asked, often enough. For they did not, although many moles came to the supposedly secret meetings the followers held with Tryfan on his mission north.

“They
must
know,” Spindle went on. “They’ve done everything else so efficiently, I can’t believe our coming is a secret to them.”

“Sensitive Spindle, humble I agrees,” said Mayweed. “Perhaps it is a plot! A thing the grasping grikes are good at. Perhaps they want us, or Tryfan here, to go north.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Tryfan, “but since we have not been harmed, and nor have any of the followers so far as we know, then we may as well continue as we are. Remember, while the grikes may need to plot, the Stone never does! If I was in favour of images of strife I know which side I would prefer to be on.”

So they had progressed, news of their coming stealing ahead as rumour does, with followers coming to the sites they found and listening to Tryfan’s words, and taking comfort from his prediction of the Stone Mole’s imminence.

“But how do you
know
?” said Spindle worriedly. “Suppose he doesn’t come? We’ll look rather foolish. Perhaps that’s what Henbane wants. And then, even if he does come, she can have him killed so that finally the Stone will look weak and helpless and the fight will go from the followers.”

“Well, perhaps that is what she hopes, and it helps explain the grikes leaving us alone. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you how I know he’ll come, because I don’t really know how I do. Yet I feel it is in Whern that the secret of his coming lies, and for that reason it is to there we must go.”

“Humph!” declared Spindle.

“Trouble with you is you want it in a text, Spindle, then you might believe it.”

“As a matter of fact it
is
in a text – Dunbar’s prophecies. But they’re so vague that they don’t really justify you gallivanting about the countryside telling moles....”

“Hardly gallivanting, Spindle! I’m exhausted.”

“You’re not the only one,” Spindle said irritably.

There is another memory we may share before we follow Tryfan on into Whern itself....

It was as they entered the Dark Peak, when they were feeling at their most beset, that Mayweed, in the way he had, found a better route for them to take. One not quite north, which veering east caught the morning sun. There the land was deep incised with meandering rivers, and though the soil was poor and acid for the most part yet, in places, it was rich and good, and among its flowers stayed the sun, and birdsong fluttered.

Mayweed had confirmed that a few Stone followers lived high and undisturbed in those parts, in a place called Beechenhill. A name Skint had asked that they remember, for there he would leave news for them. As they climbed up among its dales Tryfan had felt a great lifting of his heart, for those flowers they saw were good and fresh, and the sounds of the country were all about them as rivers tumbled in the vales below.

On the third day there, before they met anymole, Tryfan decided to wander off alone.

“But...” began Spindle, dubious.

“Beloved Sir,” said Mayweed, “we both prefer to keep you in our sight!”

But Tryfan laughed and said, “There’s something good about this place, something that fills my heart, something —” And they were astonished to see tears in his eyes, such tears of joy and sadness that an open-hearted mole may weep when he feels renewed the beauty and the possibility of life.

That day Tryfan wandered far, seeing, as he had not since a pup, the good earth all about him in all its colour and sound, its texture and its scent; in its great glory.

It was July, when the trials and tragedies of breeding and raising young are done, and the darker stresses of the winter months are still far off. July, when the earth holds moisture well, and turf springs under a mole’s paws and is full of warmth and maturing content.

July, when the sky is full of whiteness and blue, and beneath it moledom stretches forth, filled with the scent of honeysuckle and the sweet delight of rowan trees, and the hare stops upright to stare, its front paws dangling.

July, when moledom’s finest flowers bloom, and woundwort rises by the stream and rosebay where the fire has passed, and there, where Tryfan went, tormentil offers a yellow to brighten a mole on his way, and thyme a scented place to rest; while across the vale, not far for a mole to go nor so far that he cannot hear where he watches from, the green woodpecker starts and stops across the wood, knocking. Whilst nearby the insects buzz.

It was such a day in July that Tryfan roamed, the kind of day a mole desires to be alone unless a lover’s near. And if she’s not, or he is away, then when they meet again it is the day a mole remembers to ask what his lover did, to affirm they were thinking only of each other then.

Tryfan roamed that day and thought of Feverfew, and knew that if one day, by the Stone’s grace, he was with his love again he would ask her if she remembered
that
day, and what she did. And he knew what her answer would be: that she
did
remember, for the sun had shone, and the darkness of the past was gone, and she knew
that
day Tryfan thought of her.

Alone then, yet feeling he was not alone, Tryfan wandered up those vales to Beechenhill, and found a place that would forever be beloved in his heart. High enough to feel the sky was near, yet low enough for the vales below to still be real. High enough that rock outcropped and gave the hills a majesty, low enough that streams ran well, near and far, giving the air the life of water-sound; and warm enough that a mole less full of life than Tryfan felt that day might have stopped nearly anywhere, and crouched, and stared, to watch the rich life of that season wander by.

Until, finally, he did stop, the sun upon his back and then warming his snout as he extended it along his paws to contemplate nothing more than the good scent and sights about him.

“Ssh! He’s asleep.”

“Are you sure!”

“Mmm. He’s big.”

“He’s old.”

“No he’s not. He’s just a bit wrinkled.”

“He’s scarred. He doesn’t look frightening at all.”

“Are you sure it’s
him
?”

“Ssh! Keep your voice down. It must be him.”

Youngsters! Tryfan stirred slowly, not wishing to frighten them.

“Hello!” he said.

They stared. Two of them, a male and female.

“Are you the mole come to teach us?”

“The mole from the south?”

“I could be,” said Tryfan. “How did you know about me?”

“Everymole knows you’re coming here. They’ve been expecting you for ages. What have you come for?”