Duncton Found (7 page)

She was as proud of Holm as he of her, and even if she had never in all their days together quite managed to get their burrow in neat and tidy shape, why there was happiness there.

A shambly, untidy, dusty kind of happiness which made for dishevelled but obedient youngsters, each of whom loved their parents and carried good memories of them when they left to make their own way. All were moles who had learnt about the Stone and even if they became persuaded of the Word by Rollright’s unusually easy-going eldrene, whose disapproval of followers was accompanied only by stern warnings, they felt sufficient love and loyalty to their parents not to inform on them, but rather to put their faith in the Stone down to eccentricity; and in Rollright, the eldrene made such indulgence easy, for her guardmoles chose a comfortable life and let sleeping weasels lie.

So Lorren had had her broods of pups, and she and Holm had been left unmolested by the grikes, and were content now to have lived through their first adult spring without young, and find the muddy peace which they had long looked forward to....

Holm suddenly reappeared, eyes bright and staring. His mouth was open a little and he looked uncomfortable, even desperate. He was preparing himself to speak. Lorren waited.

“Got to go,” he said. “Stones. To them. Rampion to guide.”

“Rampion?” said Lorren. “But we haven’t seen her for weeks. Too busy with her young.”

Rampion was their daughter by an early litter, and she loved them both dearly and came often to see them when she had time. She lived to the south of the Rollright Stones, and was one of the followers who at times of ritual covertly visited the Whispering Stoats, the cluster of Stones that lie south of the main circle which itself was banned and too dangerous for mole to visit. The Stoats had become the followers’ meeting place.

“To Stoats she’ll go today, but then to Stones. Must not, must she?”

“Well, no, though why you should think... I mean, how you could know?”

“Not without me to guide her,” said Holm, cutting her short.

Then suddenly he was gone and Lorren was left staring, aghast. A bit of sunshine wasn’t an excuse to go gallivanting off to the Stones where a mole could get hurt by guardmoles, if not worse.

But barely had she opened her mouth to call after him than his head popped back down the tunnel and he blinked at her.

“Holm won’t be seen. Holm was taught by Mayweed. Holm’s safe as burrows. Don’t fret. Holm loves you.”

Then he was gone and poor Lorren was crying, for it was not his way to say his love out loud, though she knew it to be true, and he only would have done so if there was something to fear. Then she grumbled a little to herself, for he must have known his words would make her cry.

“Must tidy up,” she said purposefully to herself, sniffing and wiping her face with her dusty paws. “But he’s a good mole, the best, and one day the Stone will grant his greatest wish.”

It was a touching tribute to those two’s care for each other that when Lorren prayed it was of Holm she thought, and she usually ended up asking that one day he might be allowed to meet Mayweed once more, in whose company the part of him that was a route-finder felt most at home. That would be a day!

While Holm, in those moments he asked for the Stone’s blessings, always found time to request that his Lorren might be reunited with her long-lost and much missed siblings, Starling and Bailey. Now, that
would
be a day!

Holm had been right. Rampion was on the surface in the enclave made by the Stoats, not meditating or praying but nervously snouting up at the bright sun, and at the shadows it seemed to cast all about.

“You!” she exclaimed, with surprise and relief in her eyes.

He nodded, but said nothing. His presence was sufficient words for her, and in the way they had there was need of no words more to explain why she was there, and why he had come.

Then he was off, and she following, leaving the familiar routes back to safety behind them as they moved forward across the field that lay between the Stoats and the prohibited Stones. Sunlight lit their way, the same that reached everywhere across moledom that day.

He took her by a surface route to near the Rollright circle, then underground to what she guessed was the buried base of the Stone that rises at the centre of Rollright’s circle. Light filtered down through cracks in the sheep-worn soil above, and Rampion was surprised to see that the chamber’s floor showed signs of use. A mole had been this way before, and recently.

“Me,” said Holm, answering the query in her eyes.

“You!” said Rampion in surprise. “But you never told us. I thought Lorren was the active follower.”

Holm’s eyes were wide, staring at the wall of stone and then at the cracked roof above.

“We have different ways, but the same purpose. Best way in a pair. Only way.”

“Can we burrow to the surface and touch the Stone? We could escape back down this way....”

“Nearly. Not yet. Too soon.”

But he took her right up to the wall of Stone, though guarding against either of them touching it, and then, wrinkling his diminutive snout, he gazed at the roof more closely. The light came not just from the cracks there, but shimmered as well in the root tendrils that came down from surface plants, tiny shoots of grass, and the white-green of plantain roots. The roof looked frail and thin, and there was the sense of great light above it, waiting to be let in. Holm touched the trembling soil and it gave a little, letting more light in.

“Won’t have to wait long. When we thrust out we’ll touch the Stone. Grikes will see. Will chase. But we must do it, Rampion. It will be time to show the Stone Mole that this system knows he lives. All the Seven must try to do it. Holm feels it. Holm was taught by great Mayweed more than just routes.”

“I’m scared,” said Rampion, for suddenly her world seemed vulnerable, waiting for something that would change everything she knew.

“He’s scared too,” said Holm quietly. “Needs us now, needs all of us.”

Then he was silent once more, and in the half darkness of the chamber father and daughter waited for the moment when they must take their courage in their paws and break out into the light and touch the Stone.

We have but one record of the followers dying near or at the site of one of the ancient Seven that morning, and it is a most strange one and portentous.

For at Fyfield an incident occurred which was not scribed by moles of the Stone, but scrivened that same day by an eldrene, and one very different from the easy-going eldrene of Rollright.

Her name was Wort, eldrene of Fyfield, and all we need say of her now is this: had she not lived then many a follower and more would not have died. What Rollright gave way in indulgence and indiscipline Wort made up a hundred times in cruelty and persecution of those of the Stone.

Thus it was, in pursuance of vile followers (as it seemed to her), that on that June day she found herself with a cohort of guardmoles watching over the Fyfield Stone, and there apprehended three moles who, following that same urge or call we have noted already, had bravely made their way towards the Stone.

Wort killed them personally. Her talons in their choking throats, she watched their eyes dim and glaze in the bright sun as the sounds they made faded, and they died. Afterwards Wort, ordering her guardmoles to stand off for a time, went to the Stone itself to desecrate it with the blood of miscreants that she carried still on her talons.

No mole in moledom hated the Stone more, nor saw more easily the dangers to which its temptations exposed moles of the Word. “Seek out and destroy all those of the Stone, for they are evil and their vile faith is infectious” might have been her motto.

We know that she stanced before the Fyfield Stone alone, we know she reached out her talons to touch it in mockery and contempt. And we know what happened next, in her own scrivened words: “‘Beware!’ I warned myself. ‘For even here, the blood of moles who deserved to die still wet on my talons and fur, the temptations wait. This Stone seems beautiful...’ This was a test! I resolved to wait until I was sure I was not corrupted or belittled by the Stone, but its Mistress, just as the Master of the Word is Master of all. So I waited that morning, that beautiful morning, and felt joy in the testing of my strength, and sighed and wept before the Fyfield Stone as I waited for the moment I would know the test was won and I could touch the Stone with impunity!”

So scrivened the eldrene Wort, and we shall see how, in its mercy, the Stone dealt with her, and how it was that of all unlikely moles, she was at one of the ancient Seven that special morning.

Now to Siabod. The mole we meet here has a name we know: Glyder, and we know him to be old indeed, but not stricken with the infirmity that indulgence in a wormful soil brings. His life had been active, and he had led the moles of Siabod through many troubled times and, living as he did in a system of steep tunnels and slatey ways, he had always been fit and well. But lately he had begun to slow, and the talk of younger moles had passed him by for he had heard it all before, too many times.

We who have followed Duncton’s story to this June morning when Glyder climbs, know that his mother was Rebecca, mole of Duncton, and that through her he was Tryfan’s half-brother. He was the wise mole who commended Alder and Marram to his peers, and from Alder had heard of Tryfan’s existence and his mission. If there was a single disappointment in his life it was that the Stone had never put him and his brothers, Y Wyddfa, Dafydd and Fach, in the way of meeting Tryfan and his kin.

Well, a mole cannot have everything he desires and in any case the Stone provides more than enough to the mole who has eyes to see it, and a good body to feel it.

This spring past, as Glyder had begun to drift towards what wise Siabod moles call the heights, all of that had begun to seem past history, old history, and he had lost interest in it. First one brother, Y Wyddfa, had died, then Dafydd and Fach. Their passing left him the last of his generation, and feeling lonely, and he had decided to leave Siabod and live his last few moleyears by himself and contemplate that which he had spent his life guarding, the Stones of Siabod.

Glyder had prepared his moles as best he could for the future, entrusting their continuing resistance and strategy against the grikes to Alder, and the preservation of the Siabod ways to the many moles, middle-aged and younger, who had travelled with their elders to safety in the Carneddau.

Then, with gruff farewells to his friends, and final salutations exchanged with Alder, with whom he had achieved so much, Glyder, slower than he once had been, shakier too, and his fur grizzled grey and in places thin, set off down towards the Ogwen Vale, not telling a single mole his true intent. Which was, quite simply, to climb Tryfan and touch the Stones. Of what happened after that he neither thought nor cared, but assumed that one way or another his life would be over.

It was several days before he reached Ogwen, and two more before he had climbed up the untidy slopes that rise to the west of Llyn Ogwen and across the boulder-strewn levels that run there. He decided to stay for a time until the thaw came and the heights above were at least approachable.