Duncton Rising (82 page)

Oh no, Privet had no doubt that it was around that good mole that tonight’s events were circling, for again and again the Stone brought his name to her mind. She knew him, she loved him, and the Stone kept putting an image of him before her: bold, brave, beset but determined.

“Stone, help him to help the others, for I know he’ll do his very best. But he’ll be full of doubts, so guide him, let him know we are praying for him, guide him...”

Weeth, Maple, Madoc and Hobsley joined their prayers to hers, and when she grew tired one or other of them took over from her. All were inspired by the roarings and callings that surrounded the Stone which lay along the ground, its great mass shifting sometimes as the wind about them gathered strength, and the tree roots heaved and stressed in the earth.

Sometimes Privet gave a thought to Rooster and Whillan, unseen, no doubt endangered by the stressing roots about them, but she trusted Rooster. Here he was becoming Master of the Delve once more. This new beginning might make his travails worthwhile. Here the old and the new were one, and if the seasons were turning a little late, well, let it be so. It was the Stone’s work he was delving.

Then, as the winds now drove thicker and thicker sleet in among the trees and straight at the praying moles, as if to dislodge them from their stations, Weeth leapt back and cried out, “Look, moles, look!”

He pointed at the Stone he had been touching with the others, and then one by one they each saw what he had felt: the Stone was moving. Juddering, shaking, heaving in the dawn, and the ground at one end of it, where Rooster had said they must not stance, was shifting, slipping, sinking away.

“Rooster!” screamed Privet. “Whillan!”

And well she might, well she might.

For down the tunnels about the Stone Whillan and Rooster had found a huge delved chamber, filled with light, and violent disruptive sound. There they had gone, and as Rooster touched the delvings over the walls, Whillan waited for instruction.

“Touch nothing, mole!” Rooster had roared above the noise. “Only do as I tell you!” But with the sense of danger and doubt so palpable in the air Whillan needed no second telling.

He had watched as Rooster ran his great paws in the shadows and deeps of the delvings, which echoed and shrieked to his touch; he had covered his ears at the sound, and his eyes had watered with its pain.

“Aye,” said Rooster, who went hither and thither in the dark, snouting at roots, touching indentations, feeling the buried part of the Stone which hung above them, and listening to the whining and groaning of the roots that encircled it.

“Aye, this is the Master’s work. Born of a lifetime of suffering and love. Born out of darkness to reveal the light. He knew. He knew. Feel this, mole. And this!”

Again and again he summoned Whillan to him, insisting that Whillan felt the delving deeply.

“You learn, mole. You remember. You’ll know.”

Then Rooster had been almost silent and still for a time as if listening, when the only word he said was, “Waiting!”

Waiting.

To the occasional sound of the prayers above they waited, into the night, into the darkest delved sound, frightened, wanting to run, the great Stone poised above them.

“Be ready,” growled Rooster. “Time coming. Need growing. Stone nearly ready.”

But that had been a long time before.

Now dawn was coming, the chamber was lightening, and danger seemed ever more imminent. For above his head

Whillan could see that the soil about the Stone was crumbling as the roots entwining it heaved and stressed; at last the Stone did what it had so long threatened, and began to move.

“Not you, you stay!” commanded Rooster.

But... There were no buts, and Whillan stared in horror at the massive shifting Stone above his head, and at Rooster at the far end of the chamber.

“Won’t fall,” said Rooster grimly, but can kill. Root’ll hold it if we help.” He pointed at the mass of roots at the Stone’s central part which now whined and flexed from the huge winds above.

“What are we waiting for?” Whillan dared ask.

Rooster shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. “My first time too. Difference between Master and assistant is that one is trained, the other not. Being not might help. Being trained might help. Don’t know!” He grinned, and Whillan felt strangely comforted. They waited.

Now and then snatches of the prayers Privet was speaking were carried down to them: “Aid... forgive... help... courage... love...”

Then, quite suddenly, silence. Utter and complete. Rooster frowned, puzzled. Whillan stared at the Stone, which was still, though at a slight angle. All sound was gone – no wind, nothing. Just a few particles of soil and gravel falling from the roof adjacent to the Stone.

“Good Stone,

Deliver them!”

It was Privet’s voice, quite clear now, powerful, a plea, a demand, a cry for help, and as it faded the wind-sound began to come back, suddenly rapid, faster and faster, ever faster, and the chamber began to seem to break, and turn, and be destroyed by noise.

“Now, mole, now!” cried Rooster to Whillan, as out on the surface, the eye of the storm having come and now gone, the winds redoubled, and the trees all about the Stone began to creak and whine with the strain.

“Now!” cried Privet, reaching her paws to the others to pull them clear of the Stone.

“Now delve, Whillan, delve!” roared Rooster, pointing at a place where roots heaved down from above on one side of the chamber, while he delved at the other.

“Here?” cried Whillan.

“Delve where your paws tell you!” cried Rooster, and Whillan did, as if delving for his life. To free the roots, to clear the soil, to make way for the shifting Stone which rocked down, up, and down some more, and up again, more and more, closer and closer, almost crushing him, the roar of sound no different in his ears than the savage sight of soil and rock bursting asunder all about him, and all over Rooster it seemed, who stanced as powerful as rock, and root, and Stone, and delved that it might rise.

“Now!” roared Rooster.

“Now,” whispered Whillan through debris and flying fragments.

“Now!” cried Privet as she stanced clear with her friends and they watched as the wind drove blizzard snow hard and ever harder against the Stone which tried and struggled and strove to rise against it. Up, and down; up higher and driven down again, until, resolute, unstoppable, majestic, the Stone rose from the soil, bursting the roots that still held it, throwing debris to right and left, a Stone rising, rising to the sky; rising for all time.
Now...

“Now!” called out Pumpkin into the heart of the High Wood of Duncton, turning back to face Barre and the other Newborns as the Stone seemed to shudder at his plea, and its Light to become the colour of the driven sky.

“Now you will not take us. Now we are not afraid. Now we take our rightful liberty!”

Then, as the Newborns stared dumbstruck, their paws immovable on the ground, Pumpkin turned once more and pointing to the shadows beyond the Stone said calmly to Elynor, “Lead them there, you will find the way. For these few moments they’ll not dare harm us!”

One by one the followers slipped away where he indicated, whilst he turned back yet one more time to out-stare the Newborns, his clear eyes the colour of the Stone, his stance, his body, his spirit a challenge to anymole not to move, not to interfere with the Stone’s good work.

Until at last one by one they were gone beyond the Stone and found, as Pumpkin thought they would, the entrance down into the tunnels that led to the Chamber of Roots, ready cleared and prepared by Sturne himself.

Then Cluniac came to him and whispered, “Sir, they’re all below but us now. Come, sir, come while you can.”

Barre opened his mouth, Barre stared at his paw, Barre frowned at the Stone; Barre moved.

“Come along Pumpkin, sir, they’re... they’re going to start again.”

Pumpkin nodded, and half smiled, and turned his back to Barre again, and went quickly to the Stone and touched it.

“Now,” he said at last, “am I ready to commit myself to the sanctuary of the Ancient System.”

But even as he moved the wild winds drove wet leaves and snow against the Stone’s face, and Barre roared, “Take him! Take that mole!”

Cluniac hurried Pumpkin behind the Stone, thrust him down the short way towards where the portal into the tunnel had been revealed.

“No!” cried Pumpkin, “you go first!” and he shoved Cluniac through the entrance and down out of sight. Only then did he call out, “Keeper Sturne! For Stone’s sake escape while you can!” for he guessed whichmole had cleared the entrance and made it easy for the old moles to enter. Whatmole else but Sturne and himself knew the place so well?

Then Sturne appeared out of the shadows. “Go on!” he ordered Pumpkin.

“But they’re coming, Sturne, they’re coming now!”

Sturne assumed his grimmest and most formidable expression and said, “As Acting Master of the Library I order you, Library Aide Pumpkin, to go down into the Ancient System and help those refugees to escape. Go, mole! Be gone!”

As mole, Pumpkin would have refused, but as an aide he could not, and he understood why Sturne had to order him.

“Mole,” he said, reaching out, “you’ll be discovered, you’ll be identified.”

Sturne replied, “Perhaps, but I may slow them, and have the satisfaction of knowing I did the best I could: be gone, so I can cover up your tracks.”

Pumpkin ducked into the entrance and joined Cluniac below, and they ran for their lives down the tunnels after the other followers.

On the surface above Sturne did not even try to cover the entrance, for he knew he had no time. There was a crash of undergrowth from the direction of the Stone, and Barre and his two minions were upon him.

“You are accursed,” Sturne began to say, thinking only to slow them.

Barre knew the stance; he knew the voice. He had heard it earlier that night in the Marsh End.

“You!” he cried, his rage almost beyond control.

“Yes, me,” said Sturne.

Then, as other Newborns came racing in, but before they saw whatmole he was, Sturne turned and went down into the portal, and to the tunnel below.

He paused, waiting for Barre and his friends to follow so that he might divert them a little while longer, and Privet and the others get clean away. What matter that he was identified? The followers were safe in the Ancient System, safe for a time: he could do nothing more now but add just a little to their chances.

Yet perhaps, after all, it had not just been for Pumpkin and the followers that the rest of moledom had been praying, but for Sturne as well. Perhaps, too, when he had played at looking like the wrath of the Stone down in the Marsh End, he had invoked something more than images.

Barre chased after him, his outrage on fire once more as he discovered that he had not only been fooled by the puny mole Pumpkin, but by Sturne as well. He swore words of blood and damnation, and he and his two friends dropped down into the tunnel and set off in pursuit after the Librarian.

Sturne knew he had little time left, but at least he might still delay things, so he went as fast as he could, round the ante-chamber that encircles the Chamber of Roots, past portal after portal that led into the Chamber itself

He did not need to look inside to know what he would see: with such winds, at such a dawn, the roots were a terrible sight. Threshing, twisting, clashing and pulling, they formed a shifting chamber of certain death for any mole who ventured in among them.

“No, no,” thought Sturne, “that way cannot be. I must slow a little lest I bring Barre to the only other portal out of here into the Chamber of Dark Sound wherein Pumpkin and the others must already be.”

He slowed and glanced back and saw that there was little time left. He would soon be caught, and when he was he had little doubt what his fate would be. Barre’s eyes were puffed and red with anger, and his voice rasping and foul in its belligerence.

“Bastard mole! Blasphemer! Liar! I will personally...”

Sturne passed the fifth portal, then the sixth, and he saw ahead the seventh to his left, and to his right that dark jagged way through which Pumpkin and the others had fled. Here he must make a last stand, and do his best to give his friends extra time; unless, of course, the Stone chose to punish Barre with Dark Sound, which would be a fitting end for such a mole.

“Pumpkin and the followers should be all right,” he said to himself, as he turned round finally to face his end. “The Dark Sound will surely not harm them this night of nights. Has not the Stone given them its protection?”

He watched dispassionately as Barre paused in front of him, staring suspiciously about as if he expected an ambush. His friends reached him and together the three began a slow advance. Sturne felt fear. He felt cold. He felt sad. He had saved Pumpkin from death this night, only to engender his own. So this was how it was to be.

Yet something odd was in the air – subtle, strange. He frowned and considered, as Barre came ever nearer, his great ugly paws raised, their talons at the ready.