Duncton Rising (56 page)

Over their food Sturne tersely revealed to Pumpkin the remarkable story of his secret support of the Master Stour in the Ancient System since the departure of the others to points south and west, and his retreat in the face of the inevitable takeover of the Library by the Newborns.

Sturne, it turned out, had known all along what Stour’s grand plan was, for the Master had taken him into his confidence, and he had been the mole who sealed up the Master’s cell above the Main Chamber after Privet and the others had departed, and before the Newborns assumed control.

“I could not risk telling you then. Pumpkin, because I was afraid that if the Inquisitors interrogated you or me, or both of us, one of us would implicate the other. If it was just me, well, perhaps I could succeed in not telling them of Stour’s whereabouts.”

“Well, I guessed something like this was apaw and I must say I was relieved because I felt lonely,” declared Pumpkin. “I could not believe that you of all moles would go the Newborn way!”

A modest look of gratification came to Sturne’s serious face.

“Now, when the Master went into retreat he gave me certain instructions which I have followed faithfully. Regarding the texts – I have succeeded in saving a good number, though sometimes I think the Inquisitors were near to guessing what I was about. But some serious losses have been sustained which will need to be rectified one day. Of course, the Master himself secreted away many original texts in the Ancient System, along with the six Holy Books of Moledom, which I believe you yourself saw and handled just before his retreat began.”

“Terrible things!” said Pumpkin. “Confuses a mole to touch them, breaks him to try to handle them. A great mole like the Master has the character to do it, but a simple aide like me, well, I’m not up to it.”

Sturne allowed a smile to play briefly about his mouth. “No, no, well, each to his task, mole, each to his task. Now, regarding the Master himself, I have been in the habit of leaving food for him at certain entrances into the Ancient System, when I have been able to rid myself of the attentions of the three Inquisitors. The Master has been in the habit of taking it and leaving a quick scribing as to the next location. In this I have been greatly helped by the records left behind by the great Mayweed, who, as you know, was moledom’s greatest route-finder, and at one time of his life took it upon himself to explore and describe the Ancient System.”

“I always
thought
he had left such records behind,” said Pumpkin, suddenly excited. Nothing thrilled him more than history local to Duncton Wood.

“Gradually, the instructions have indicated places nearer and nearer the Stone,” continued Sturne, “and I assume that the Master’s great and difficult work of carrying the six Books to the Stone is the reason for that. In short, as best he has been able, under cover of the Ancient System he has taken these great works to their final resting-place.”

“You mean beneath the Stone itself, beyond the Chamber of Roots?” said Pumpkin, his voice quiet, awed at mention of this most mysterious and dangerous of places, which lies beneath the ground around and about the Stone Clearing in the High Wood.

“Aye,” said Sturne. “I think – I believe – he has succeeded in getting all the Books very near that place, and wished to get them through the Chamber before Longest Night.”

“You said “wished” in the past tense, as if he now has no choice in the matter,” said Pumpkin, much concerned. For fearful though he was of anything to do with the Ancient System, Sturne’s solid and exemplary courage had stirred in him the desire to help as best he could, and he did not wish to hear that at the final moment the Master had been unable to continue.

“ “Wished” is the past form,” said Sturne impatiently, “so it would be in the past tense, wouldn’t it! Well, anyway, three days ago I finally found one of the Master’s scribings telling me to leave what food I could near the Chamber of Roots itself, which I duly did. The food has not been touched since, there is no sign of mole, and Longest Night is on us. Now, I must make an appearance before the Stone at dusk for the Newborn ritual which you will have been told about,” and here Pumpkin nodded, “but we cannot be sure when we go to the Chamber of Roots what we will find, or what task we must perform. I was reluctant to involve you, Pumpkin, but you are now the only mole I can trust, and I know how highly the Master regards you. I cannot fail to appear at dusk for fear of giving away the fact that I am not Newborn at all, but perhaps one of us will still be needed near the Chamber and you can stay on and fulfil whatever task remains, and you will not be missed.”

“Ah! Yes!” said Pumpkin non-committally. It was just the kind of nightmare situation he had feared earher on. Worse, in fact. However... “I wall not let you or the Master down!” he declared boldly.

“I’m sure you won’t, Pumpkin,” said Sturne.

“When are we going to go to the Chamber of Roots?” Pumpkin grinned madly, unable to believe he had asked such a question.

“Now,” said Sturne, “now we have eaten and are fit for any task.”

“We’re not waiting for the fog to clear?”

Sturne shook his head and stanced up.

“Well, can’t we just hang on while I tidy the place a bit? I like to leave things orderly, you know.”

Sturne shook his head again and began to climb up towards the portal.

“You don’t think later might be better than sooner?” Pumpkin called up after him.

“No, I don’t,” said Sturne. “Now is the time.”

“ “Now is the time”!” muttered Pumpkin, looking wildly round his snug chamber and modest tunnels. “Goodbye home! Goodbye peace! Know that I, Pumpkin, Library Aide, was happy here. Farewell!”

Then, raising his snout as best he could, and puffing out his greying, puny chest. Pumpkin set forth from his portal and into the mist after Sturne, wishing he knew how heroes felt, for knowing that might have helped. But then practicalities took over and, observing that Sturne was having trouble finding the way. Pumpkin caught up with him and said magnanimously, “Let me show you, friend, for we’re on my patch now.”

“Does your patch extend as far as the Ancient System?” growled Sturne.

“It’ll have to if we’re to get there, won’t it?” said Pumpkin, with the lunatic good cheer of a mole who has finally leapt into the void and, though he has no idea what is rushing up at him from below, knows he can do nothing more to protect himself from it.

He got them there without difficulty, huffing and puffing misty breath back into the thick mist as they straggled at last into the Stone Clearing; peering carefully forward, and with extended paws, they finally groped their way to the darkly looming Stone itself

“Well now,” said Pumpkin, “what next?”

“Follow me,” said Sturne, who had got his bearings once again. He turned round the back of the Stone, left the Clearing and went in among the trees of the High Wood, whose trunks rose grey and strange into white nothingness, and came at last to an errant surface root from one of the bigger trees around the Clearing, and followed it deep into the wood.

“Here’s the place,” said Sturne.

He delved aside some twigs and leaves and before Pumpkin could say, “Library Aide!” he had shoved the smaller mole down the hole, and followed him into the echoing, mysterious space beneath.

“Be glad there’s no wind about. Pumpkin,” whispered Sturne, his voice echoing back eerily from the tunnel ahead, “for the wind-sound down here is like nothing I’ve ever heard. Even so...”

Even so indeed. For far off down the tunnels they could hear the awesome and strange sounds of the Ancient System – whispers and the pattering of pawsteps, faded cries and distant callings, such as any Library Aide in Duncton’s Library has heard on a winter’s night at the ends of some of the more dusty and forgotten tunnels, but never quite grows used to, and
certainly
never ventures near.

“The Chamber of Roots is not that far, so follow me, and don’t worry if you hear pawsteps following you, it’s the sound of your own, only multiplied!”

It was as well he had been warned, for however quietly he tried to put his paws down it seemed to Pumpkin that an army of moles was just at his rear. Most disconcertingly these phantoms did not stop when he and Sturne halted but, as it were, marched by and disappeared down the tunnel ahead of them.

“You never quite get used to it, but familiarity helps,” said Sturne.

They went on a short way further, turned a corner or two, passed through a portal, and Pumpkin found himself in the ante-chamber that surrounds the Chamber of Roots itself, famed in Duncton’s legends and fables but so rarely visited in recent times.

Seven portals open into the Chamber from this circular antechamber, each leading in among a maze of roots which not only fall from the roof to the floor, but intertwine themselves at angles, in twists and bends and folds upon each other; some massive and thick, others no more than slim tendrils in which the green juice of life flows between tree above and soil below.

This colour, this pale luminescent green, seems to tint the air of the place, and casts itself all about the roots, which, even on the stillest of still days – and this was a stillish day – contrive to move and twist, to rasp and sometimes suddenly jerk, so that to the green “mood” of the place, strange sounds are added, whining, cutting, rasping, mewling and groaning deeply, as if telling of life’s mysterious and inexorable process of birth and death and birth again. Occasionally the roots move and part and a mole can see in among them towards the centre of the Chamber, where, it was said, the base of the Stone plunges down into the soil. To this holiest of holy places few moles had ever ventured, and fewer still had returned alive. Down there the Seven Stillstones were returned, each to await the coming of its complementary Holy Book whose heart or essence it represented.
*

*
The tale of the Stillstones and their return to Duncton Wood is told in Duncton Found.

Pumpkin stared in alarm through one of the seven portals into the Chamber of Roots, and then wandered on round the antechamber to the next, and the next after that, and the prospect of going through them seemed more terrifying each time.

So he circled round the Chamber of Roots uneasily, jumping at the sudden sounds, marvelling how sometimes at one portal or another the roots seemed to shift and open up a way down which a mole might venture, if he was inspired – or insane.

“The base of the Stone lies through there, doesn’t it?” he asked rhetorically. “That’s where great moles of the past took each of the Seven Stillstones. Into there Bracken went, didn’t he? All the great moles. Boswell,
he
went there.”

Sturne nodded. “Great Tryfan too,” he said.

“And now the Master Stour, he’s got to go in there,” said Pumpkin. “He’s got to take the Six Books, hasn’t he? And it’s here that when the Book of Silence, the Seventh and the Last Book, is found, that a great mole must bring it.” His eyes were wide with the vision of so awesome a thing, and he gulped and gasped to think that he, Pumpkin, was stanced so near such a holy place.

“Aye,” breathed Sturne, “it’ll be brought here and taken in. Then will all be put to rights, and the Stone’s Light and Silence safe for all time, for moles to seek out as they will, and strive to know as best they may. We must pray that Privet finds its whereabouts, for that is what her quest is for.”

A spatter of sound came from beyond an ancient portal, older certainly than that by which they had entered the ante-chamber. It had been brilliantly delved, such that its sides made use of two jags of black shiny flint, softened only by the gentle curve of the arch that linked them.

“The Chamber of Dark Sound is through there,” breathed Sturne. “It’s the way we’ll have to go.”

“We?” squeaked Pumpkin, horrified.
Here
was bad enough, but
there,
through that dark portal into the place allmole who had ever kenned the Duncton Chronicles knew perfectly well only very special moles dared venture.

In there was disaster, confusion, and a death caused by one’s own pawsteps and fearful breathing being reflected back as Dark Sound, which expressed the evils and flaws in even the best mole’s nature.
There
a mole made his own Dark Sound and died from it.
There
he. Pumpkin, would certainly not venture. Here was far enough.

He glanced away from the portal, back around the antechamber, and then into the Chamber of Roots with its peaceful green translucent light; among the high hanging roots, thick and gnarled stems intermeshed with the tendrils of fresh growth, and the whiter roots of a different age ran and then broke free and hung; there he saw a thing staring, merely in passing at first, and his eyes wandered to something else. Then his memory put its shapes and shadows into form and he realized
what
he had seen.

“Sturne!” he said, grasping his friend almost frantically. “Look there!”

They looked and saw that set into the roots, growing there like a living thing, though surely dead, was what seemed to be the face of a mole; snout, teeth, eyes and all.

“It is... mole,” whispered Pumpkin, shaken to his core.

“It is a skull,” said Sturne, barely less disturbed himself

It
was
a skull, round which the roots had grown and surged so that the eyes were living root-bark, and the tongue the russet of some lichen growth, and the teeth – the teeth were real. As, horror-struck, they followed this form further into the tangle of growth beyond, they saw thrusting out of young tendrils the mole’s skeletal paw, and talons, distended and twisted, turned and fully extended; still horribly identifiable, the ribs curved up behind, supported by the growth of which they appeared a part. The vertebrae seemed twisted into a spasm of living arboreal pain, and further off still was a single back paw, talons black and pointed. It was a mole who had ventured into the Chamber and become trapped and killed by the shifting roots, and now acted as a warning to others.