Duncton Quest (105 page)

But Weed knew Sleekit might not be trusted, and Tryfan sensed it. Which, if it were so, meant that Sleekit had much cleverness for Weed did not allow doubtful moles to stay long near Henbane. Perhaps Henbane knew after all, but liked the conflict between two moles. Yes... that might be it. With such thoughts Tryfan, still quite impassive, stilled his mind, finding it easier if he avoided Henbane’s gaze.

He looked at the male on her right.

“As for this one,” said Henbane, putting a possessive paw on that mole’s shoulder, “I think you know him too.” Henbane smiled while she caressed the mole’s plump side.

It
was
a mole they supposed, though as for recognising him that was less certain. More a creature, really. Plump to obeseness, his face puffy with fat and his mouth weak; his eyes dead in their stare at them, and his fur all pampered and falsely glossy. His flanks were unmarked, his talons weak. He smiled, and in that moment when his face moved to that empty smile his eyes changed, and in them they saw a flash of real emotion – shame and corruption – and, terribly, Tryfan knew his name.

“You know him I think, or he knows you. Tell them your name, my dear,” purred Henbane. Her talons played sharply at his neck.

“My name’s Bailey,” he said, “and I come from Duncton Wood.”

Tryfan knew it before the mole spoke, but poor Spindle did not and he started, genuinely shocked. Weed watched, watched everything.

“Hello, Bailey,” said Spindle to his only son, Henbane’s plaything. Though his voice was steady Tryfan could feel him trembling and knew the shock he felt and the awful dismay to find his son had survived for
this.

He knew, too, that Henbane knew the cruelty that she did to confront a pampered, spoilt young mole of Duncton to two of its leaders.

“You see, Tryfan, I have my own follower from Duncton Wood, my favourite whose company I enjoy and who reminds me of the simple things in life. What a sweet system Duncton must have been to produce such... naivety. But run along, Bailey, we wish to talk.”

Bailey heaved himself up and looked around briefly, nodding his head in a weak half idiotic way, and waddled off, his fat rear barely squeezing into the tunnel he went down.

“He keeps me amused,” said Henbane, adding so quietly that at first it might have been a whisper in the mind until a mole thought about what it really meant: “But now you’re here, Tryfan, I don’t need him, do I?”

Tryfan’s glance had lingered on the departure of that corrupted thing that had been a goodly youngster he once knew, and Spindle’s son, and he knew the first feelings of a horror that he could not have imagined before. For he began to guess why the Stone might have sent him and what it might ask him to do.

Afterwards, witness to that moment, Spindle scribed a strange and tragic thing: that Tryfan then, there, in Henbane’s seductive burrow, had never looked so strong and fit and sure before, and never did again. It was the moment of moments in a mole’s physical life that he strives to reach and never knows, until the moment has long past and age has crept up unawares, that that was the moment. The moment when a mole might do anything and of which Tryfan, looking back, might yet wish he had reared up then and struck down the vile thing beautiful Henbane was.

It was Tryfan’s burden: he knew, and understood that in some way the Stone wished it so, that he might be a sacrifice to Henbane so that Boswell, and Spindle too, might be free. Yes, and Bailey. It was in the knowing and the facing of it that Tryfan’s greatness lay.

“My favourite” she said of Bailey, but it was on Tryfan she looked now and the “favourite” was, as Lathe might put it, “as good as dead’. And yet knowing that, and that such would be anymole’s fate who lingered with Henbane and was allured by her, he felt again as their eyes met in that enchanted burrow, where light played like a May wind in trees about them, his sinking towards an adoration of the mole he most despised.

To make it worse, each mole in that chamber knew what was happening, for Henbane and Tryfan had eyes for none other.

Spindle knew it.

Weed, watching now, knew it well; his eyes narrow and his mouth moist, aware of the males that had preceded Tryfan and what had happened to each of them. What he now saw so cynically was the continuation of a desire Henbane had from the day Tryfan successfully eluded her in Harrowdown and made fools of all the grikes at Duncton. She had both wanted him and wanted to destroy him, and Weed knew that her desire to do both in her own way, pleasurably, was one of several reasons why she had permitted this arrogant mole’s naive trek from south to north to the very heart of the Whern. So, knowing this, Weed watched and felt certain he knew what the outcome would be.

Last there was Sleekit, doubted mole, nomole certain of her; watching Tryfan struggle before Henbane’s soft gaze and knowing that soon now, after so long, she might have a role to play, yes, knowing that. And feeling more alone at Henbane’s side than anymole knew then. The Stone discovers moles’ courage in many different ways, and yet if there is one truth a mole can speak of the Stone it is that it always gives a mole a task
that
mole can do, if he, or she, has the will to do it. It is in that choice, between success and failure, that the strength and the weakness of the Stone follower lies. Spindle, Sleekit, Tryfan, Mayweed – each with a task nearly impossible, assembled now at Whern. Oh yes, the Stone will find a way, but only if the moles who profess its faith have the courage and intelligence to act as they must to see the Stone’s purpose right.

Henbane spoke, breaking across the thoughts of those moles.

“So. And why have you come, Tryfan? Some doubted that you would, but I... did not. No, not I. And seeing you here, Tryfan of Duncton, in the flesh and the fur, talon so strong, flank so... strong as well, seeing you... I am not disappointed. A worthy leader of an ancient belief. It is a pity it is doomed. But I ask again, “Why have you come?” It would be nice to know.”

“To profess my faith, Henbane,” said Tryfan.

“Moles here call me WordSpeaker,” said Henbane with a sudden sharpness edging her soft voice.

“They are of the Word, I am not,” said Tryfan. “Henbane is your name, as Tryfan is mine.”

Henbane laughed, eyes glinting. She both liked his reply and hated it. In the sound of her laugh a wise mole might guess that the touch of her talons could be the sweetest caress or the cruellest torture.

“Good,” she said ambiguously. “Call me what you will. Meanwhile, once again: why have you come? I have nothing you could want.”

“Boswell.”

“Ah! Yes... him. He’s an old fool.”

“He’s alive?” said Tryfan immediately.

“Some might wonder. But yes, I suppose he is. And you would see him, yes?”

There was a quality to her voice which demanded that a mole agreed with her, but in agreement gave something of himself away. Of course Tryfan wished to see Boswell but to say “yes” was... weakness. It was most strange.

“Yes,” said Tryfan.

“Yes, of course. It will be, it will be.”

“When?”

“Soon, of course!” said Henbane, laughing. It was a dreadful thing, but her laugh was good, it was most beautiful. Not to laugh with it seemed almost like denying life itself. Tryfan had to flex his talons into the chamber’s floor to recall, again and again, that
this
was the mole he saw snout Willow and Brevis,
this
was the mole who overran moledom with her cruelty, this....

“Tryfan, what are you thinking?” asked Henbane, stretching herself before him, overt in her sensuality. She sighed a lover’s sigh and gazed on Tryfan pleasurably, annexing something of him to herself.

“Of Boswell,” lied Tryfan, who never lied; lying in Boswell’s name!

Spindle glanced at him and knew the struggle there and in a way understood it. In other circumstances nomole would have been better suited to Tryfan than Henbane. Seeing them together it was as if no other mole was there or should be there, even though Spindle himself thought her disgusting. But more than that, he saw with an appalled clarity that Henbane was circling Tryfan, and making him think that giving in might be the only way to release Boswell. But
was
old Boswell really here?

“Oh yes, Spindle, he’s
alive
,” said Henbane, reading his thoughts.

“Well, we’d like to see him then,” said Spindle, which sounded so lame that the moment he said it he regretted it.

Henbane shrugged and looked irritated, and all warmth in that burrow was gone and the air seemed suddenly chill.

“Then you had both better see him, had you not?” she said, as if desiring to see Boswell was rejection of her. “After that, Tryfan of Duncton, you and I shall talk again.” With which she turned and abruptly left them.

Her presence was such that its sudden absence had the power not only to make a chamber seem empty when she left it, but to make the moles there feel bereft as well. No wonder Bailey, only a youngster when he first met her, had found her both irresistible and confusing. But it was the same power that, when she was in a different mood, could make the very air smell of fear. Stone help anymole whose heart was hers. Stone help Tryfan who stared after her in silence.

“The othermole, Mayweed, where is he?” asked Sleekit.

Weed scratched himself and settled down before he answered.

“Lost. Made a run for it. He was near the Clints.”

Sleekit then looked at Tryfan without expression.

“He will die,” she said. “A pity. I had heard he was a mole worth talking to.”

“Really?” said Weed. “Now had you? I wonder why.”

“He led these two into the Wen, and got them out again. Of
that
I would like to hear.”

“He will die,” said Tryfan looking at Sleekit strongly. He meant: he will not! Did Sleekit understand that? Did

Weed know what he really said? Sleekit held his gaze steadily, and Tryfan knew she understood, and that if there was a way she would find it and reach Mayweed. Then Tryfan felt tired and turned to Weed.

“Henbane seemed to say we were to see Boswell. When?”

Weed laughed unpleasantly and looked first up at the roof, then round behind himself, and then out through the fissure in the chamber’s wall across the moor to the place where they had said the Master Rune was in retreat.

“Now,” said Weed.

Now! New life in Tryfan’s paws, new hope. Now, at last, after so many years, Boswell once again. Beloved Boswell. Half disbelieving what they did, they followed Weed from that strange chamber with relief and expectation.

Above them, somewhere high among the stalactites, where the rock arched one way into light and in another turned to some shadowed place where there was a gallery and sound stilled to nothingness, there in that bleak silence an ancient mole stirred. He had watched Bracken and Rebecca’s son, he had listened, and now he followed them.

His coat, black. His eyes shining black. His mouth cold. His teeth white and sharp. His flanks as graceful in the cruel way an old mole’s can be when his life has been austere and mean. His shoulders scarred, his gait slow. About him was a shadowed darkness that would have seemed to turn the tunnel he was in about and around and over into confusion for any other mole who was there. None was. That mole had watched alone.

Henbane’s father. Evil Rune.

He turned, and senior sideem came forward and supported him out and away to follow where the others went.

While down in the empty chamber where Henbane and the others had been, light played and a fat mole came. A tired mole, a corrupted mole, whose every step was an effort, whose fur glistened with unhealthy sweat. Poor Bailey.

To the very edge of the fissure he went and he looked out towards Providence Fall, watching the swathes of spray that flew up and faded out across the moor.

He was thinking of Spindle. He was feeling the shame of a mole who feels worthless, utterly; and beyond saving. Helpless and alone.

Poor Bailey cried like a pup and looked across a scene that was to him so desolate. He cried until at last he dared whisper a name, the name of a place, the memory of which was his sanity.

He cried and he whispered it, tears salty in the corners of his mouth. Again and again he whispered it.

“Barrow Vale,” was the name he said. Barrow Vale, the lost heart of Duncton Wood.

And then, in the very heart of Whern, he added to that hopeless litany a simple and courageous prayer: “Please Stone, I want to go home and be where Starling is. She’s my sister. I want to go home.” And poor Bailey cried alone.

Chapter Forty

The route that Weed and his attendant sideem led them on was through limestone and in places cut into open galleries which hung, as Henbane’s chambers did, over the gorge they had first seen when Lathe brought them to the High Sideem.

“The stream which runs through the gorge is called Dowber Gill,” said Weed, who seemed more friendly once they were clear of Henbane’s tunnels. They crossed the head of this stream and then dropped down north westward.

“But doesn’t Rune have his burrows this way, by a waterfall called Providence Fall?” asked Spindle.