Duncton Rising (57 page)

Behind them, a spatter of sound again, hinting at a shift in the wind out on the surface. The Chamber of Roots trembled and was still, and they saw here and there in its depths evidence of other moles caught in decades or centuries past by the shifting roots among which they must have vainly struggled. The roots trembled, there was a sudden rasping shift, something seem to break, and all began to move easily.

Pumpkin pointed a paw mutely at the skeletal form of the ingrown mole, and as they stared at it, the roots that held it swayed and rose and as they did so the mole’s bones moved and turned; the spine twisted, the head arced back as if in a scream, the paws seemed frantic for a moment, and then all was gone into the shadows of the be-rooted heights of the Chamber, and could be seen no more. Pumpkin’s fur almost stood on end and he let out a little bleat of dismay.

“Be not afraid, Pumpkin,” whispered a voice behind him – a voice that made him very afraid indeed – “these remnants of lost moles are all that remains of those who tried to enter the Chamber of Roots and desecrate it in years gone by. They are nothing now but a warning to those of us with too much vanity perhaps, or who venture where they have no task.”

A paw touched Pumpkin’s and he slowly turned and found himself face to face with Master Stour once again. Thin and wizened now, aged far beyond the span of time that had passed since Pumpkin had left him when he went into retreat, fur pale and thin and dusty, eyes all wrinkled, Stour stanced, staring, smiling, peaceful.

“Master,” whispered Keeper Sturne.

“Good Master Stour,” said Pumpkin, tears in his eyes as he lowered his snout in obeisance to the mole whose Library had been his life’s work.

“I am glad you came, Pumpkin, you of all moles! The last moments of my task have come but I cannot do what I must without your help. Nor without yours, faithful Sturne. Listen, my good and worthy friends, my body is even weaker, even frailer than it seems. You see a mole who has survived far beyond his years and whose body would crumble to dust if it were not for his mind. Well, I am near ray time of rest and Silence. I have traversed whole worlds alone here in the Ancient System, and with the Stone’s help I have brought to the portal of the Chamber of Dark Sound the Six Books. Now I shall take them to their final resting-place through the Chamber of Roots at the base of the Stone itself, where, if all we have learnt is true, I shall find the Seven Stillstones. Six at least can be redeemed. Such is my task and you must help me, Sturne, and you. Pumpkin, by bringing the Books one by one to me here.”

He spoke clearly and slowly; his eyes had grown pale and rheumy, and when he blinked the lids moved only slowly, and his body trembled, and sometimes he seemed to wince with pain.

“It is Longest Night?”

“It is approaching, Master,” said Sturne. “Outside we have done all you asked of us, but we have no news of Privet or the others. No news yet...”

Stour shook his head, and waved a paw dismissively. “No, no, Sturne, tell me not. I am dead to that world now, though I care for it. I pointed a few moles in the right direction, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Master Stour, oh yes you did!” said Pumpkin eagerly. Stour nodded vaguely. “It seems that was a long time ago, so long ago. Maple, he was strong and will do what he must, I know. And Drubbins...”

“Master, Drubbins died.”

“Yes, yes, he died,” he said indifferently, as if he had known it would happen. “Fieldfare, she can be relied on, and Chater, the best journeymole I ever knew. Whillan, a mole I feel I failed and yet, in my time here, I have learnt that great moles are beyond others’ failure and success. He
is
a great mole you know, that Whillan; he will come through. We did not understand. And Privet. Care for her, Pumpkin, care for that mole. Her journey is the hardest of them all. Pray for her this Longest Night, for as I end my task she will begin hers. Oh, she will. Care for her, mole, care for her beyond care. The world beyond... what a strange hurt thing it has been.”

He fell into silence, almost into sleep indeed, but roused himself suddenly to reach out and grab Sturne’s paw with something of his former vigour, and said, “Go, mole, go to the portal and bring whatever Book you first find there.”

As Sturne went Stour peered after him and said with a smile, “Book of Healing, Book of Fighting, Book of something or other, that’s what he’ll find.
I
had to carry them all this way. Not easy. Wouldn’t have started if I’d realized. Well, well, we’ve got “em here now and all I’ve got to do is get “em in there! Eh, Pumpkin?”

“Yes, Master,” said Pumpkin.

“Well, it won’t be easy.”

“It won’t. Master.”

“Pumpkin, you are the best Library Aide in moledom, remember that, won’t you?”

Pumpkin grinned feebly. “I’ll try, Master.”

“Don’t try,
do,”
said Stour, frowning. He stared with some severity the way that Sturne had gone, evidently impatient for his return. Sturne reappeared, carrying one of the Books, which though not large, seemed to weigh him down mightily. Sweat was streaming off his back, and his breathing was coming in gasps.

“That’s why I needed two of you,” said Stour drily.

Sturne placed the Book on the ground in front of Stour and the ancient Master peered at it and then reached a paw to touch it.

“Book of Suffering,” he said dismissively, “wrong one. Might as well do this in the right order. Pumpkin, off you go and get another Book, there’s a good mole.”

Pumpkin duly did so, peering nervously round the dark portal beyond which, but a few paces on, was a jumble of Books. He darted in, grabbed the nearest, and was well on his way out again when a great rumbling sound of pawsteps charged him down and he found himself flat on the ground, the Book slipping from his grasp.

“Will have to try harder,” he muttered, hauling himself up and taking the Book up again with much greater difficulty, for it seemed to slip and slide in his paws. As he grunted with the exertion of trying to hold it and take it out towards the portal, his gasps and groans and pawsteps all echoed and re-echoed and rumbled and roared about his head, confusing him.

Moments later he blundered out of the portal and found himself almost collapsing towards Stour, before whom he gladly let go of the Book, just as Sturne had done.

“Hmmph!” said Stour, barely glancing at it. “The Book of Darkness. Sturne? Can you do better?”

“What am I to seek, Master?”

“Well, the Book of Silence would do nicely, but I happen to know it’s not there. Never was. Might never be. So the first Book will do...”

So it went on, one after another, time after time, until between them Sturne and Pumpkin, with increasing difficulty and distress, had managed to bring forth the Six Books and place them down to Stour’s satisfaction. He, for his part, had appeared to grow more lighthearted as this work continued, onerous and exhausting though it was for the other two. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he was dancing about from one paw to another towards the end, when the last of the Books (‘Ah, at last we have it, better late than never: the Book of Earth!’) finally arrived. Meanwhile, poor Pumpkin, who had portered it, collapsed from the effort and took some time to come round.

The Master Stour, now cool, calm, and collected, smiled benignly, his thin wrinkly skin, like crushed and dusty birch-bark, crinkling into a thousand creases around his eyes and mouth. He touched the Book of Earth with his paw, but gently, for its covers and folios were the most ancient of all the Books, all dry and grey with time.

“Earth is first to go in, then Suffering, then Fighting, then Darkness. After that, if I survive them all and still come out alive, there’s Healing – too late for me! – and finally Light.”

“Er, Master,” enquired Pumpkin, “what happens if you don’t “survive”?”

“You two will have to take whatever Books remain into their final resting-place so that they cannot be desecrated by false mole, whether Newborn or otherwise.”

“Us, Master?” said Sturne, glancing at Pumpkin uneasily and then towards the Chamber of Roots.

Stour nodded indifferently. He looked at the Books, then at the nearest of the seven entrances into the Chamber of Roots, then at his paws. He was suddenly sombre.

“What’s the weather like outside?” he asked. “Still quiet? It affects the roots you see, and my chances.”

Pumpkin was only too happy to go and find out. A moment’s escape from the Books and the threat that Sturne or even himself might have to set paw into the Chamber, was more than welcome. He ran back down the way Sturne had first brought him, climbed up to the surface, and peered out. The scene had changed little. A shade lighter perhaps, but the mist was still thick and the trees rose up as they had before, grey, looming for a time, and then thinning into the white nothingness.

Except, oh dear, except now the mist was moving, shifting, swirling slowly among the trees, growing thicker for a moment and then thinner once more. It was a subtle thing, almost unnoticeable at first, but then when Pumpkin did see it, it felt as if the Wood was subject to massive movement, the mist being still and the great trees advancing eastward through it.

“Westward,” whispered Pumpkin to himself, “it’s moving before a westerly wind.”

Then, from the direction of the Stone Clearing, he heard a muted call.

“Brother!”

Then, “Over here! Here, Brother, near the Stone.”

Without pausing to try to see or hear anything more. Pumpkin ran back down below, his pawsteps echoing loudly ahead of him, scurried through the tunnels back to Stour and Sturne and told them what he had seen and heard.

“Well, then, the wind of change is coming from the west,” said Stour, “but the air is stillish for now. But only stillish. Now each of these Books must be taken in by a different entrance, just as, I have no doubt, their complementary Stillstones were in decades past. Pray for me.”

He said this last softly and quickly, and the moment he had done so he took up the Book of Earth, without any apparent difficulty, and carried it straight into the nearest of the entrances and went in amongst the labyrinth of roots. As he did so he touched one, which vibrated and whined above him, and set off others, so that there was a whisper of sound and a tremor of movement and one of those sudden shifts within the place in which all the roots seemed to move momentarily at once, with the result that their patterns and forms were changed. In that moment Stour disappeared, any view of him blocked now by the shifting, trembling roots among which he wended his way to the innermost holiest place in moledom.

Time passed, the sounds of movement and moles somewhere above were heard, and Pumpkin and Sturne looked at each other, and the precious Books they now guarded, with concern.

“He will come back, won’t he, Sturne?” said Pumpkin.

Not being a mole to mouth platitudes, Sturne said nothing, but pursed his mouth and frowned, and stared stolidly at the texts, and then uneasily upwards towards where the Newborns went back and forth, making their preparations for Longest Night.

Then, just as they were beginning to think that they had seen the last of Stour, he reappeared, but not at the entrance by which he had entered. His snout poked out from another portal; he eyed them and said, “Here! Help me! Phew!”

They went to him, supported him, and pulled him clear of the roots.

“Better get on. It’s the turn of the Book of Suffering. Ah yes...”

He went to the Books, took another up rather too quickly, staggered back off balance and nearly went flying.

“Master!” said Sturne.

“Master of nothing!” declared Stour. “Not even myself. This is going to be a long day into Longest Night!” Then, puffing and panting with the Book, he went back to the entrance by which he had come out and went in among the roots again, and was gone as mysteriously as before.

But this time for longer, and he emerged, again at a different entrance, very tired, and looking as if he had suffered a rough passage to and from the base of the Stone. In his absence Pumpkin had gone off and found some food, and this they persuaded the Master Stour to take. He was lost in his own thoughts as he ate it, muttering unintelligibly to himself, staring round in a frowny way at the Books occasionally, and then towards the dark portal into the Chamber of Dark Sound.

“Scribed a journal,” he said suddenly. “Left something for you, Sturne, so you will know what it was like in here all that time alone. Not good for a mole. Needed all the strength I had, and have none left. Good that I knew you were there, for you are a worthy mole, and will be my successor. None worthier. Go and find my journal when you are ready, it will be the making of you. It’s safe in the Chamber of Dark Sound. Now...”

Then the old Master Librarian was up once more, and lifting the Book of Fighting, with which Sturne had had great difficulty when he had gone to collect it. But Stour took it up as if it were light as a feather, and tottery though he was, made his way without difficulty to another entrance, for another journey into the Chamber of Roots.

So the day passed on, and when they checked up above as they sometimes did they saw that the day was still cold, the mist remained thick and was still swirling its slow way westward through the High Wood and beyond.

By the time the ante-chamber began to darken towards dusk, and Sturne to fret that he must depart for the surface lest the Newborns miss him, and his secret support of the traditional followers of the Stone be discovered, the Master Stour had succeeded in transporting only five of the six Books to their final place with the Stillstones beyond the Chamber of Roots.

Of what he had seen or experienced there he had said not a single word, but both moles had noticed that when he had emerged after taking in the fifth Book, the Book of Healing, he was very tired and slow, and barely able to talk at all. A mood of resignation, even lethargy, had come over him, and despite prompting from Sturne, now so anxious to assume his duties on the surface, Stour only shook his head, and kept his snout low, unwilling even to look at the Book of Light, which was his final task.