Duncton Quest (17 page)

But over their voices came a low moan, indefinable, vibrating....

“Come
on
!” they shouted at them, fear in their voices, even Weed joining his talons to the others as they pushed Tryfan towards an entrance.

Tryfan said again, desperate now to gain time, “Where are you taking us?” But their reply was to harry them faster along and quicken their chant.

“Stone,” cried out Tryfan from his heart, for he knew he was being taken somewhere, or to something, terrible, “help us now!” He turned to look at Spindle whose earlier bravado had turned to fear, and saw the beginnings of a submission that comes with great tiredness.

“Stone!” he began to cry out again, but as he spoke the very words were torn from his mouth, the sky darkened, the wind was suddenly gusting strong and the moaning sound that worried the moles turned into a deep and sonorous note from the Blowing Stone behind them.

The moles about him hesitated and stopped, their mouths began to open in distress, their teeth to snarl as if to bite themselves, and their talons were wild against the sky and ground as if to stop the sound. Even their leader seemed caught in confusion while on the slopes above Weed’s smile was gone and there was a desperate surprise in his eyes.

“The Blowing Stone!” one managed to cry in fear.

“Come
on
!” cried out another, but his voice seemed suddenly tortured as the Stone sounded again, even more powerfully, and Tryfan saw them confused all about him, Spindle included.

Instinctively in that moment of panic Tryfan took his chance. He pushed himself clear of the moles nearest him and, as they seemed to go yet wilder with distress, pushed through to grab and support Spindle with his right paw. Then he turned back towards the Blowing Stone. At first Spindle was moaning in distress as well, but as they got nearer he seemed to gain strength once more and, no longer needing support, ran alongside Tryfan. Their paws felt light on the ground, their snouts were full to where the sound came as ahead they saw the great Stone loom up, forbidding but certain, powerful but benevolent, and they ran forward to its sanctuary.

So confident were they that they dared turn round to look back at their captors and were astonished to see how far they had travelled. The grikes were scattered on the slope beneath them, only Weed seeming capable of watching after them through the sonorous soundings of the Blowing Stone. To him Tryfan shouted, “Tell your Mistress I shall return for Boswell. May she never dare harm him or
she
will “Atone”!”

His words were carried out before him, booming and resounding with the great notes from the Stone behind. He stared for a moment longer, saw Weed turn away in confusion and then with Spindle at his side, Tryfan entered the worn area of grass at the ancient Stone’s base, and reached out to touch the Stone itself.

It rose out of sight to the sky, worn and pock-marked with time, the strange holes and fissures in it that were the source of its sounds were black in its grey-green mass.

A peace and silence came on them. Spindle said, “I’m tired – and scared!”

“You did well, Spindle, and we are safe now. The grikes will not venture here. We will rest and then leave Uffington.”

So there, in the shadows and dry grass at the Stone’s base, Tryfan and Spindle squeezed into shelter, and with their minds whirling with tiredness and relief, wonder and fear, they watched out over the slopes.

The wind died, the notes sounded no more, and from the ground through his paws Tryfan could feel the vibrations of frightened moles, escaping moles, until he felt them no more. Then as the day advanced they crept into the darkest recesses of the Stone’s base, with still-wintering ladybirds in the cracks above their backs, and fell into a deep sleep, safe in the Stone’s protection, flank to flank, snout to snout.

Chapter Seven

When Tryfan awoke in the dark shelter of the Blowing Stone, he knew immediately that something had gone, something familiar and disliked. Even something feared.

He stirred and snouted about in puzzlement, going out from beneath the edge of the Blowing Stone into the light. And, oh! he sighed, breathed deeply, and stretched out as if to touch the world about him with each of his four paws in turn.

For where the day before – no, the months and mole
years
before – there had been cold, and bitterness, and withered vegetation beaten by a wuthering wind, now there was warmth and the scent of spring. Not the hint of it in distant light, which they had seen a few days before, but spring itself, all around, in scent, and sight and smell and excited growth and busy callings of birds, and the scurrying of insects; here,
now
!

He snouted higher into the air, his eyes alight, not knowing which way to turn so promising did every scent and sound seem to be; so very welcoming was everything to mole.

Then he called out, “Spindle, Spindle!” to wake his friend and show him things to give a mole pleasure.

But Spindle slept deeply, and though he stirred and groaned comfortably at Tryfan’s call, Tryfan fell silent once more to let him sleep on and turned back to the springtime.

The dawning sun was casting its warm rays over the slopes about him. Early morning mist clung to the deeper, danker hollows of Uffington Hill and drifted up weakly from among the beeches on the slopes far below.

From somewhere down there he heard the busy cawing of rooks and then, as the sun gained in strength, and the mist cleared to reveal a world of life and gentle colour that stretched as far as the eye could see, there was a rising of wings nearby, and he heard the first sweet shurrlings of skylark overhead.

Yet even as he relaxed into it there came over him, for the briefest of moments, dark panic as he remembered Henbane and Boswell and all of it, all that darkness and trouble. He snouted in the direction of Uffington Hill above him, then crouched back again, and knew that his task was not there now.

Boswell had told him to journey away, to seek others’ support and to teach them what he knew. What he had seen of the grikes, and what Spindle had told them, was enough to make Tryfan believe they had had a lucky escape, and one that was not of their own doing but the Stone’s. That same Stone that ordained the seasons, and the compass, if not quite the direction of moles’ lives.

Now...? Now they had little time. The grikes would be after them again, and the best way he could help Boswell was to do what he had told them to and be guided by the Stone.

He moved a few steps further away from the Blowing Stone and turned to face it. As he did so, and the sun began to warm his fur pleasantly, he felt the distant vibration of mole and knew he and Spindle must soon travel down-slope to the Vale of Uffington and from there make their way to safety.

Spindle stirred, looked up, saw Tryfan, came out and settled his snout on his paws for a moment and declared, “Blessed be, but the spring has come!” Then, humming with a kind of tuneless good cheer, he busied himself looking for some food, quietly leaving Tryfan to his contemplation of the Stone.

Tryfan looked up at it, composed himself as Boswell had taught him, and whispered, “Stone, Boswell made me a scribemole but I am not worthy. He entrusted me with the task of leading moles towards the Silence, but I have not Silence. He told me to journey, but I know not where.

So now I ask for your guidance and entrust my life to you.”

Then he lowered his head humbly and prayed to the Stone to give them both strength and purpose.

Nomole knows now how long his meditation lasted, but he felt no fear as he heard the grikes approaching from across the slopes. Before the Stone a mole’s time is his own.

Tryfan finished his contemplation and muttered, “Well if I’m a scribemole I had better start scribing!”

“Have some food,” said Spindle behind him, where he had been patiently waiting, and they ate the food he had found.

Tradition has it that it was after that, in the shadow of approaching danger, that Tryfan scribed the first of his great invocations, using the bare earth on which he stanced, since he had no better. He scribed fast, with great concentration, and when he had finished he ran his talons quickly over the words repeating them to himself.

Spindle meanwhile watched with excitement and awe, for he had never seen scribing done in the open under the sky. The scribemoles of Uffington did it in burrows and tunnels, in shadows, secretly, as if it was something to keep to themselves and show nomole else. But here Tryfan seemed almost to rejoice in scribing in the open before the sun, and sharing it with another. It seemed to him as if Tryfan was talking to the earth itself and that if the Stone had given him the task of helping this mole of all moles then it was one he wished to do well.

“What’s your scribing say?” he asked, crouching back in silence, and Tryfan spoke the words he had scribed:

Oh Stone,

In our deeds

In our words

In our wishes

In our reason

And in the fulfilling of our task

In our sleep

In our dreams

In our repose

In our thoughts

In our heart and soul always

May the wisdom of love,

And thy silence, dwell always in our heart

Oh in our heart and soul always

May thy love and thy Silence dwell.

They stayed in silence some moments more before Tryfan turned to the Stone, stared a final time up at its great heights, which were now golden in the morning sun, and then with a nod to his companion, led them off out of the eastern reaches of Uffington to start the journey Boswell had commanded that they make.

“Whither are we bound?” asked Spindle, who had taken a position just a little behind Tryfan.

“To Buckland near the Thames where the scribemole Brevis first went, and from there we must, before continuing our greater journey, make for Duncton, for I would see it once more before we travel onward. Moles there can be trusted, and they are led by my half-brother Comfrey and he should know our purpose. Perhaps there we may find moles to help us on our quest, for then it is northward we must go, where evil and disruption come from, to there we must take the healing lessons of Silence.”

Without saying more, they moved on quietly down-slope away from the Holy Burrows, leaving the scurryings and searchings of the grikes behind them, never looking back, but trusting that the Stone would protect Boswell whom they left behind, as it would protect them as they journeyed on.