Duncton Quest (115 page)

So Mayweed led them out of the Clints by a southward route, leaving the dark rising of Whern behind them as they dropped down the succession of limestone scars that mark Whern’s western side, and sought to make passage to Grassington.

And not a moment too soon. Behind them over Whern dark blizzards gathered, the northern wind grew strong, and winter began to cast down its bleak pall.

By the time those same winds had caught up with Tryfan and Spindle, they had already crossed the Dark Peak and were travelling south over lower ground.

At first Tryfan’s passage had been painful and slow, for his sight was impaired and his paws wounded and weak. But, gradually, he had regained his health and strength, and though his face was heavily scarred now and his sight still limited, his paws were better and he could move quite fast.

Spindle had decided to ease his passage by choosing routes along roaring owl ways which, though exposed and full of danger, yet provided a smoother path. The dangers were reduced because they used them at night when the gazes warned them in good time of what was coming and they could scurry to the undergrowth that lined the route.

Such ways had the advantage, too, of anonymity, for nomole travelled them but they themselves, and their only company was rook and kestrel to whom moles were unappealing prey. Especially moles prepared to use their talons. Owl were the greater danger, and the moles kept close for safety, and were always alert.

As for roaring owls, they learnt much of them. Their time in the Wen had made them used to the noise and fumes, and they knew to avoid their gaze. They went too fast to be troubled by moles, and seemed to notice them not.

So by mid-December, when winter set in from the north and the first snows came, Spindle was able to say with confidence, “We’re more than halfway Tryfan, and you’re getting stronger. That’s the power of prayer for you! There’s hope we’ll get you home!”

Tryfan half grinned, rueful and serious, and said nothing but Spindle was used enough to that. This journey back was very different from the journey out. Then they had met many moles, then Tryfan had spoken of the Stone and moles had flocked to hear him. Now he desired that none knew of their passage, and made Spindle understand that it was a time of thinking and retreat from mole.

Yet, sometimes when they went off the ways moles did find them, sheltering in some nook of somemole’s tunnels, hiding, and shivering as winter took grip.

“You look all in, you two do. Vagrants eh? You should burrow down in this weather, friend.” And then, in a lower voice, such moles usually said to Spindle, “Your mate’s a goner by the look of him. Got savaged by fox did he? He’ll not last long... So, whither are you bound?”

“To find a healer,” Spindle would say, “who is named the Stone Mole.”

“That’s a joke and a half, mate, but I wouldn’t talk like that if I were you. This system’s of the Word now, moles don’t talk of the Stone....”

“The Stone Mole’s coming,” Spindle would reply.

“Maybe, and you’re off to find him are you? Well, he’s the only one who’ll help
that
mole. As for healers, none of them left these days! The eldrenes tend to a mole’s needs and if illness comes, well, that’s the judgement of the Word!”

Strangely, such moles never said a thing about their passage through, perhaps because to help a vagrant of the

Stone was, in some way, to serve a need in themselves they had half forgotten. Often such moles brought them food, and let them rest without further disturbance. And more than one, and sometimes more than that together, came to wish the two moles well, and that they might return home safeguarded.

While a very few clutched Spindle’s paw, as if in him they saw a faith they could not themselves publicly profess, and whispered, “If you find the Stone Mole tell him our name. We helped you for him, aye, that’s what we did! And may your friend find peace!”

So when they were alone, Spindle could say with confidence, “The Stone is helping us, Tryfan, it sends moles to guide us on. We’ll get home, we will! It will be Longest Night again soon, and maybe we can find a Stone to pray at which you can touch, maybe it will help you then.”

But Tryfan’s retreat continued as he delved into his own doubts and faith, so deeply indeed that sometimes Spindle caught him stumbling, though whether from his impaired sight, or a more profound darkness was hard to say.

Longest Night
was
near, and it seemed almost as if the driving weather wished to kill them before it came and Spindle could say the ritual prayers on Tryfan’s behalf. No mole in living memory had ever seen the weather that came then. North, north the wind, so cold that some days it turned breath to ice on a mole’s mouth, and froze up streams, and began to kill the worms, creeping its freezing talons down through the soil, making even deep tunnels chill.

Sometimes the branches of trees fell crackling down, sometimes the wind stopped and the landscape was frozen still, and birds that sought to roost died where they were, their bodies torn by fox and rook. Dangerous times, yet still Spindle trusted in the Stone and led them on.

They travelled on even when the wind renewed, a wild, maddened wind, from which all creatures sought protection except the few, the very few like them driven forward by some impulse that the vagrant has to wander on.

Those few days before Longest Night Spindle led them on into worsening weather until they could journey no more and had to shelter or die. Food they found in frozen carrion which Spindle dragged into the den they made. There they hid as the freezing blizzards roared, and the surface turned to wind-eroded ice and in the woods to drifted snow. Strange the surface then, because in places the wind had exposed the humus underneath, which was white with frost and made ways for mole between the icy drifts.

Longest Night came, its daytime grey and bitter cold, a day that spread its doom across all moledom, a day when winds died and a pall fell everywhere. Stone on Stone was deserted across the land, nomole mad enough to venture forth; not in Avebury, or Rollright, or Caer Caradoc; not in Uffington or Duncton; not in Fyfield or Siabod. Quite deserted. The great Stones were abandoned for the first time in the long centuries since great Ballagan’s coming. Truly, the grike held sway.

Yet here and there, why
everywhere,
there were still the few who at least
thought
of the Stone that day, and a few who had dared to travel for that special night but were driven down below by the cold now, daring not to go up to the surface and tread the final way to the Stones they had so nearly reached. So the grikes held sway across the land, but not in all moles’ hearts.

Perhaps a few even poked their snouts out and looked about as dusk and the time for celebration came. Spindle did. But the air was strangely heavy and cold in the copse where they had stopped, the surface cracked with frost, the sky seemed grey with death, the trees and grass and rocks and frozen waters of the earth so still and nothing moving anywhere.

Yes, Spindle was one of the few who peered out and who, like the others, came back down again.

“It’ll be dangerous out there tonight, Tryfan,” he whispered, his voice in awe. “It’s as if the whole of moledom is waiting and dare not move. ’Tis cold, so cold, and perhaps we should just say a few words here. Yes, that would be best. Soon we’ll say something, when the night’s started.”

But Spindle said no more as if even his speech was squashed from him by the cold, oppressive sky, whose death-grey changed to deep murk black with not a star in sight.

Yet Tryfan moved, snouting up towards the entrance Spindle had been to and himself peering out. He seemed disturbed and restless, and came down and went back up several times, and each time the night growing darker and more heavy. The wind had died to nothing. The cold was great.

“Better not go outside again, Tryfan. Best to stay inside. There’s no Stone hereabouts so far as I can tell....”

“Always the Stone,” said Tryfan ambiguously.

“What’s troubling you? Is it because it’s Longest Night and you want to be celebrating?”

“Moledom’s waiting, Longest Night has come. There is not a follower in the land who does not seek a sign tonight. Few may be our number now, scattered and lost, yet as we wait here, many others wait as well. He is coming, Spindle, and I believe the Stone will grant us hope tonight. Now, come with me to the surface and be my eyes, for mine are not much good. See if there is a Stone here, or somemole, or any sign that will give us hope. Come now Spindle....”

His voice was quiet and calm, but suddenly he reared and, seeming not to see or hear Spindle’s warnings or willingness to come, he crashed up out of the burrow into the frozen night. Then when Spindle tried to slow him Tryfan summoned a maddened strength to fight him back which made his friend retreat, not from being forced to but rather because he could see resistance caused Tryfan even more distress. So Spindle let him go, out among the frozen drifts of snow in search of a Stone it seemed. And

Spindle followed lest he got lost or harm came to him, and he saw something Tryfan could not. The air was still as death where they went, and yet, unseen by them, most strange, high above them the stolid ghostly clouds began to move.