Duncton Rising (60 page)

Until, at the last, when he began to grow still, and his limbs cold, and the strife in his body seemed to ease, he could only stare at Privet and say nothing, a stare that was all he could use to cling on to life; a stare that brought tears Privet could not hide.

“Oh, Chater,” she whispered, “my dear friend.”

But his last movements, his last struggle with words, were for Hamble.

“Go,” he said, “go...” And he raised his right paw and sought to point south-eastward, Duncton way.

“Go to Fieldfare?” whispered Hamble. “Is that what you want me to do, mole, to tell her?”

Then Chater smiled, a smile of tears and love and last goodbye, and his paw grasped Hamble’s as he whispered, “Yessss...” His eyes, still half open, dimmed, the light suddenly gone from them as he breathed his last:

“This mole saved my life,” said Hamble, “and that of Rooster and the others. This mole —”

“This mole was my friend,” said Privet, not letting go of him.

Then they talked, as if unwilling to let Chater go, one an old friend, the other a new one, their words soft and subdued; they talked as if Chater still lived, telling of their own lives, of their journeys, of all they had known and seen in the long years since Hamble had guided Privet off the Moors. Oh yes, Chater might just have been a mole who was listening in.

Until there came a moment when it was right to let Chater go, and lay his head on the rough grass and acknowledge that he was there no more, but gone ahead of them to the Stone’s Silence, his paw outstretched still towards distant Duncton Wood where until these last few molemonths his love had always been, the beginning and the ending of all his journeys. Now...

“Go to Duncton Wood, Hamble,” said Privet finally. “Its moles will have need of the leadership you can give.”

“But what of Rooster? Without him I am nothing. His great destiny is not fulfilled.”

Privet smiled. “I saw him on the slopes, and he saw me. All these years I have longed to see him, to love him again, but when I saw him he was not the mole I first knew. He was still the violent thing you helped me flee from. But the real Rooster is there inside, the Rooster I saw and loved on Hilbert’s Top. The mole I love is there still.”

Hamble nodded. “He is, and I know it, but I can’t go alongflank him again and fight with paws that I no longer want to redden with other moles’ blood. It is not the way.”

“Go to Duncton Wood, Hamble.”

“And you, my dear, whose friendship I have missed as if it were part of me? What will you do? How can I leave you now?”

“My task is up there on Caer Caradoc now. Last night I fled from it and came arid found a mole I loved, and lost him. Today... today I will go up to Caer Caradoc and the Stone will show me a way forward. Losing, setting aside, giving up... the Stone is telling me what I must do. Go to Duncton, Hamble, it needs a mole like you.”

“What can you do alone on Caer Caradoc?”

“Tell them,” said Privet, ignoring his question. “Show them. Let them know your heart. The time has come for moledom to fall still once more. Each of us must find our own way now. Go to Duncton...”

Hamble was still for a time, head low, and then he turned and looked at where Chater lay to one side, his fur, his face, his snout already stiff and different, and not him at all. Only his last gesture remained, a paw, a talon, pointing the way for Hamble.

“He wanted you to go to Fieldfare and tell her how he died, and where, and why,” said Privet. “He would want that, and so would she.”

“She’s not in Duncton Wood, he told me.”

“Go to Duncton, Hamble. She’ll come home.”

“How can you know that? The Newborns...”

She stanced up and looked into his eyes, and then beyond him to where so far away her beloved adoptive system waited for them all.

“I’ll
tell
her to come.”

“How?” he persisted.

She smiled and shrugged. 1 don’t yet know, but the Stone has been inside me with growing calm and Silence for some time now, pointing a way for me just as Chater pointed a way for you. As you find it hard to simply go, so do I. In truth, my dear, we are both afraid to do the simplest thing. Go Hamble, let me see you go.”

“It is not so easy —”

“It is, oh, it is. That’s it, you see, so simple. We
do
it.”

“We do it,” repeated Hamble slowly, stancing up and shaking himself as if after a long night’s sleep. “And you say you’ll find a way to make Fieldfare come?”

Privet said, almost in wonder at the flow of her own words, “I will. I don’t know how yet, though the knowing’s near now, so near... Oh Hamble, go, and show me how simple it can be!”

She sounded suddenly passionate and young and he stanced up to her, embraced her roughly, held her close, and said, “As when we left Crowden so easily to find Rooster, that’s how simple it can be. I’ll go just like that!”

Then a smile as easy as sun on ripe corn broke across Hamble’s rough face and like a mole who had struggled to find a route for decades past and suddenly sees it before his snout, he stared south-eastward and said, “I’m off. You come home when you’re ready, mole, and Madoc, you take care of her. And Rooster...?”

“We’ll show him the way, Hamble, all of us. By what we do. The Masters of the Delve used to come when moles were ready for them, and left when there was no more for them to do. Now a Master is among us again, but we have not shown him we are ready. Now we must start. Go, Hamble!”

“Gone!” he said, turning away with a chuckle.

Without further ado, not even a wave, he
was
gone, the way Chater had pointed, alone across the fields, as simple as simply doing it.

“As simple as simply doing it,” whispered Privet after him, watching the rough back of her oldest and dearest friend disappear on a journey she too would have liked to make, for it would have allowed her to turn her back on Caer Caradoc and all its confusions, dogma, lost ways, and treacheries.

“But I cannot,” she said when he could be seen no more, turning at last towards Caer Caradoc again, which looked dark against the lighter western sky beyond now that the day’s brief sun had fled.

“Now I am ready,” she said to Madoc. “You wish to come with me, don’t you?”

“It’s what I feel is right,” replied Madoc, “and what I feel the Stone wants. My task lies with you.”

“Whatever happens?”

“I think so,” said Madoc, uncertain of herself.

“Stay close, my dear. Your presence will comfort me. Come, let us climb Caradoc before Longest Night really begins. Let us head straight for the Stones. Come now!”

Then they too were gone from the place where Chater had died, and where he was no more, leaving his body there in the solitude of the morning, for the winter rooks to find.

“Come!” said Privet again, partly to encourage herself as they reached steeper slopes once more, “the Stones and the future wait for us!”

Whillan and Maple also waited for Privet up by the Stones, though with a hope that had dimmed somewhat as night had passed and morning come again. But they had stayed where they were, discovering soon enough that good fortune, and the guidance of Thripp’s friend, had them well placed to observe the surface movements of the Newborns and yet remain undetected. None, bar two of those they had already seen with Thripp, approached the Stones at all, and it seemed that what they had heard was true, the Newborns were in superstitious dread of the Stones. Theirs was a faith based on fear and punishment, and the comfort that Duncton moles felt near and around such Stones was alien to them.

But safe though the two moles were, they were not at all content, partly because whilst they could study the Newborn activity, and guessed that the Convocation was about to begin during the morning of Longest Night, when suddenly few moles were about and all was still, yet it was only surmise; added to which was the continued absence of Privet.

This latter concern was not eased at all when, at midday, their guide was seen to approach the Stones in the company of another Senior Brother, one they had not seen before, and both slipped suddenly through to where the Duncton moles kept their long watch. Their original guide now introduced himself as Brother Arum, and the mole he had brought to meet them was Brother Rolt, who expressed surprise and dismay that Privet had not shown her snout up the slope already.

“I left her myself at the foot of the slope last night,” he said uneasily.

“Well, she’s not come and I’m inclined to head downslope to see if we can find her,” said Maple.

“I wouldn’t do
that
if I were you,” said Brother Rolt. “Here you are forgotten, and possibly useful, down there you may be discovered and, as many others have been since yesterday, “disappeared”. Not that there is much disappearance involved in the death of
those
moles,” he added, pointing at the moles who had fallen to their deaths the night before, and whose bodies were now all too visible.

“What moles were they?” said Whillan.

“Siabod moles,” said Brother Rolt. “All killed by Brother Quail’s Inquisitors.”

“What good is Privet going to be able to do up here if she ever gets here?” demanded Whillan. “It’s far too dangerous!”

Brother Rolt sighed. “I wish I knew. But the Elder Senior Brother seems to think —”

“He’s not exactly done well in the past, has he?” said Whillan bitterly. “Now he’s suggesting Privet comes into danger.”

“Ah no, that is not quite true. Privet has a mind of her own and will not come unless she wishes to. Perhaps that’s why... but it is necessary that she meets him.”

“Why?”

“It is time,” said Rolt mysteriously. “It was time long ago.”

“Did you tell her moles would be waiting for her?”

“I may have mentioned it, yes,” said Rolt.

“Then she’ll come if she’s able to,” said Whillan despondently. “She would not want to let us down. But it’s all so pointless.”

“Yes, it does rather seem so,” said Rolt unexpectedly. “Yet if you knew the Elder Senior Brother —”

“We met him,” said Whillan. “I talked to him.”

“Then you know,” said Brother Rolt.

“I know what?” said Whillan.

Rolt looked at him with frank curiosity. “So you were the mole raised by Privet?”

“Yes, I was. What of it?”

“A rare privilege, I should say. But you were not her own?”

“No,” said Whillan shortly. “What
do
we do if Privet comes upslope to us here?”

“Well if she does, she’ll not be alone,” said Rolt after an uncomfortable pause, “there’s a mole called Madoc with her. And if they do then I suggest you pray, and hope that the Stone will put an idea into Privet’s head, for we’re short of them. The Elder Senior Brother is quite silent on the subject, merely insistent that she comes. Part of a vision he has had.”

“Another one!” exclaimed Whillan impatiently.

“What of Chervil?” asked Maple to change the subject.

Rolt shook his head with distaste. “I had such hopes for him, but... he is Quail’s mole now. And Quail needs him, for many younger moles in the Order, and those who live far from here and serve us at a distance, will abide only by the Elder Senior Brother Thripp’s authority, or that of his rightful son and heir. That, I may say, is not his wish, but moles will be moles and revel in hierarchy. Chervil therefore has power to stance between Quail and the complete destruction of his father’s great ideals for harmony and shared worship and obedience to the Stone’s will.”

“Duncton’s free and easy way would have been better,” said Maple gruffly. “As in the past.”

“Ideas do not stand still,” said Rolt, “and if they do they usually die. Moledom may yet have cause to be grateful for the Caradocian Order, and to the Elder Senior Brother. Meanwhile you will be safe, and we will hope that Privet will come and that the Stone will guide us well this Longest Night. The Convocation has begun already, in its heavy and close-ordered way.”

“Is Deputy Master Librarian Snyde playing his part?” asked Whillan with an ironic smile.

“Ah, yes. Is he?” Rolt turned questioningly to the old mole.

“That Snyde!” said Brother Arum. “He wanted
me
to be a scribe and was not impressed by my claims to be an archivist. “You’ve got a scribing paw, what’s wrong with you?” says he. Well, I got out of that. But I must say he’s an insidious kind of mole, and like such moles is well-organized. There’ll not be a word spoken at this Convocation which is not faithfully and accurately recorded, and copied, and kept for evermore in some text or folio or collection somewhere here and never kenned again by anymole!”

As they were nodding their heads in agreement with this their attention was drawn back to the edge of Caradoc by an upflight of black rooks from below – the same, no doubt, that had been harrying the corpses of the fallen moles.

“It’s them, I think!” exclaimed Whillan, pointing to two moles who were labouring up the slopes below, straight towards the Stones. From above, it must be said, their ascent looked steeper and more dangerous than it really was, and Whillan and the others watched their progress with some alarm.

But to Privet, and Madoc, it was the welcome end to a long slog which, at times, had seemed interminable. Whether they were observed or not by alien moles they now neither knew nor much cared – Privet’s calm and Madoc’s anger at all they had seen had brought them beyond fear, at least for now. They climbed the last short stretch, paw by aching paw, breath by laboured breath, between outcrops of rock, over short grass, round a clump of thistle, on and up, looking only ahead and above them, to where the Stones loomed ever nearer.