Duncton Stone (95 page)

Each had taught her different kinds of love and brought her nearer to the Stone. But faced by the horror that was Wildenhope, which was moledom too and therefore something of herself, and with Quail demanding that she speak and choose between those she loved, she could find no words to say.

In that terrible moment she saw something of the truth in the Stone’s Silence, which is simply this: saying nothing might say most of all. She was not fool enough to confuse her own silence with the stillness she would need to discover if she was to know the Stone’s Silence, but a mole must start somewhere, and so she started with the simplest of vows, which is the hardest to keep: silence.

The first agony was immediate, for in choosing her new path she saw that she seemed to turn from the ones she loved, and even from searching for the Book itself. She saw Whillan’s face, she knew he did not understand, she saw his loss, and felt it as her own.

“Stone,” she prayed, and it was the first of a hundred thousand prayers as she journeyed into the un-silent void which was herself, “Stone, help him understand.”

How many times she nearly died the death of spirit on that long journey, which led her by degrees back to Duncton Wood, we do not know; nor how many times she was tempted to give up and break her vow.

Yet always, when she seemed near to doing so and near spiritual death, or when some new turn threatened her mortal life, there came moles to help her, sent by the Stone. That mole who guided her to safety from the dangers of Wildenhope and Snyde’s plots. That mole from the Community of Rose who brought her out of the fastness of the Midland Wen and gave her space to learn that the best healing of a mole’s spirit may lie in the healing of another’s.

Then at Leamington, where Thorne aided her, and later Hodder and his sister Arliss, who led her off to safety once again. Then Ross, who set off in pursuit of her as a Newborn, but had to become a pilgrim to find her and lead her back to Duncton Wood.

And lastly, and
now...
Pumpkin, guided by Stone knows what insight and bravery to venture out on to the surface and so make his way to the Stone Clearing to be with her that Dark Night, ready to serve her once again as library aide.

“Pumpkin!” How near she came now to saying his dear name.

Now...

Now, with Quail and Snyde cast out, and Thripp gone to the Silence, a kind of chaos reigned about the Stone. Maple, unaware as yet of the danger Sturne was in, had the task of ensuring that the High Wood was secure, for though the Newborns had mostly fled, a commander never rests. Insurgence, counter-attack, treachery – this is the language a commander must know. He and Ystwelyn had to protect the followers and Duncton against such things, and negotiate with Thorne.

While Chervil, now the most experienced and commanding non-military mole alive, sensed that if peace was to be maintained, he had things to see to there and then. Peace, he felt, does not grow on trees. It is made by mole, and maintained by mole, so he immediately became busy too.

But failing them, what of Rooster her beloved, and Hamble, her oldest, dearest friend?

Many have wondered about Rooster. Should he not now have stayed close by? So long apart had they been that could he not have spent more time up there by the Stone?

The truth is that he knew it was too soon to come back to Privet. Alone of all the moles, except Thripp, and he could not now help, Rooster understood that Privet’s journey to find the Book, which must be made alone, was incomplete. He knew it, and so did she. Their love, which was still as sweet and sure as it had been up on Hilbert’s Top, if never yet fully expressed, could wait a little longer. It was enough for him that she was near. It was enough for her to know he cared and understood. So, Rooster-like, he wandered off, Frogbit at his flank.

As for Hamble, he had no wish to be anywhere but by the Stone and in the presence of two moles he held so dear: Privet and Pumpkin. So he tried to stay with her, he really did.

“I’ll get you some food,” he said, when the crowds and rush had abated somewhat, and few moles were coming up and saying, with a certain disappointment in their eyes, “Er, is it true,
she’s
Privet? The thin gaunt one stanced with that raggety old male?”

“It is,” said Hamble.

“Oh... And the Book?”

“No Book,” said Hamble, “not yet”.

“Oh...”

Their disappointment was palpable, and few seemed to want to approach her directly. There was something about her that was distancing, some look in her face, some sense she gave out of being alone and unreachable.

So Hamble went off to find some food and Pumpkin said, “Madam Privet, do you
want
some food?” She looked at him and he said, “You want some peace and quiet, don’t you? I know you do. I know a place...”

Then Pumpkin led her off; although there were so many moles about, rushing here and there, chattering like blue-tits in a bush about all that had happened, only one noticed them go, and he got it wrong.

“Went that way,” he told Hamble, pointing quite by chance towards a spot which Hamble knew led to an entrance into the Ancient System. So it seemed reasonable that they had gone that way. He searched for them but naturally he did not find them. At first he thought they would come back; then he thought they would stay safe, and
then
he began to have some doubts and so set off to find Rooster to see what they should do.

Pumpkin did not immediately take Privet into the Ancient System, but led her instead by ways he had been unable to trek for so many molemonths past, across part of the High Wood and then down the Slopes a little way to that unremarkable and so often unnoticed place where his own modest tunnels lay. They were in poor shape, the entrance portal having been ruined by the Newborns in some vengeful act against him, and his main chamber’s roof broken in.

“No matter, it is still my own!” he said cheerfully, “and if you know where to look there’s worms aplenty for a couple of thin old moles like us! Now you settle down there and I’ll tidy up a bit.”

It was what Privet needed, and she slept a little, waking to find the place tidier than before, and some food ready.

They ate, and Pumpkin began to tell her what had happened in Duncton since her departure nearly a full cycle of seasons before. He told the tale simply, beginning with the cleansing of the Library by the Brother Inquisitors, and then of Sturne’s great courage, and how the two of them helped Master Librarian Stour porter the six sacred Books to the Chamber of Roots.

Of Stour’s death he told, and his own later tribulations, which ended with the escape from the Marsh End, and leading the rebels into the Ancient System.

“Can’t say I ever got used to the place at all, Privet, for the Dark Sound is ever present there, you know. But, well, I know you’re going to have to go there, and it’s no good me trying to pretend otherwise. My duty as library aide precludes that kind of deceit! Got to show you where texts are, and give my best advice, haven’t I?”

Privet smiled.

“So it’s no good me going on about it, the fact is there’s only one text you’re interested in now, and that’s the lost and last Book. I’ll tell you what I know, and what I don’t know, and you can decide what’s best. I’m only here to help.”

He told her of the difficulty all of them had had with Dark Sound, and how in certain places in the Ancient System it was so bad that a mole could not go on without risking his very life.

“Wanted to go on you see, carried forward by curiosity. You know me, Privet! I’ve a snout for oddities, for finding answers to old questions, for searching things out and putting them back in their right place. I
am
a library aide, and Master Librarian Stour trained me himself!”

Privet nodded, and smiled again.

“Dear me, your silence is a thing, it is! Makes a mole talk. Makes a mole think! Makes me say this: my snout tells me that the Book’s waiting for you to find it, Privet, right there in the heart of the system, which is protected by Dark Sound. I can lead you some of the way but you’ll have to go on alone. So there, that’s what I think.”

He crunched at a worm ruminatively and when he looked up again Privet was on her paws waiting at the portal.

“
Now
?” he said.

She did not answer and he knew she could not.

He looked about his tunnels ruefully. “We’ve only just got here, Privet. Does it have to be now? Hmmph! I can see it does. Scholars are so impatient!”

He went past her and out on to the surface and looked about again and suddenly “now” was all about them, and everywhere.

Now was
now
.

The tunnels of the Ancient System were as still as ever he remembered them, though he knew that would mean little when they reached the difficult parts. They might be as silent as death, but Dark Sound was still Dark Sound when it began.

“What was that...?”

He started and paused as their pawsteps ran ahead of them into tunnels he had never quite reached, and he heard a cry, or scream.

“Dear oh dear, Privet, we’re too old for this. This is a young mole’s task.”

Privet now began to lead him on, and on, on through tunnels that grew deeper and darker, and felt undisturbed by time. Echoes all around, fearful shards of sound, and the armies of long-forgotten moles that roamed the ancient tunnels were all about them, charging down on them, hurrying them along, ranked before them and unpassable. Unaccountably, Pumpkin felt suddenly cheerful, wildly so.

“Well, we’re still aliv —”

His voice was snatched from his mouth, his paws turned under him, the dark walls closing.

“Priv...”

She held him still, calmed him, let the ghostly moles rush by, but he knew that if she left him now he would be for ever lost.

“We could turn back,” he said hopefully, dread coming into him.

But silently she led him on and he began panting and gasping, seeming to have to run to keep up.

“All right for you, Privet mole. I think you’ve been here before.”

She had, many times and in many places and knew this for what it was, which was but a noisy beginning to something that would be unexpected. Always that.

“This is the place I was trying to tell... TELL-TELLTELL...”

The echoes of the word thundered back at him like talons out of night. In the darkness Pumpkin frowned and stopped.

“This,” he repeated calmly, challenging the tunnels to answer him, “around here,
this
is the place where Cluniac and I could not reach before. This is where things are. This is where even Mayweed never came. But here we are and it hasn’t taken long.”

Privet laughed.

“You still have a voice, Privet,” he said.

The Dark Sound was sonorous about them, and he peered at the shadows and forward to the turns, back at the bends, and sideways into chambers, which... the chambers which...

“Privet! PRIVET!”

She stopped, turned, came back to him, looked the way he pointed, which was into a side tunnel no different from many they had passed, but that they saw light, and felt fresh air on their faces. The former was a glimmer, subtle and changing, and the latter had the scent of spring.

Privet led him into the tunnel, which trembled with sound as they entered it, and the light, away ahead of them, caught at the ancient indentations upon the walls they passed.

“Pri...” whispered Pumpkin, who found it hard to breathe, and had a dread of what they might find ahead, though the air was good.

“PRI...” rumbled Pumpkin’s voice, then sharpened, then swung viciously and turned back on him, and, to his ears, the sound was as sudden and as sharp as the rake of gleaming talons across his snout. This was a place where a mole did well to keep quiet!

They went on, close together, Privet herself showing signs of reluctance to go round the next bend, and then the next, and most of all the last – for last it felt to be. Beyond, the tunnel widened to a portal, the sound seemed to shake the walls and floor, the light to fade and then brighten so fast it made them giddy and unsure.

They reached the portal, entered in, and found themselves stanced still in a chamber that seemed to stretch to their left flank, on and on, and whose soaring walls told them how deep they were in the earth. Roots hung free high above, translucent in the light that came from here and there, and seemed to change, making the distant glimmer they had first seen.

The walls had recessed arches and were most marvellously delved, though how Pumpkin had no idea. By giant moles perhaps, for whatmole-else could reach so high, and delve a line so delicate as that which ran and soared, and turned, and crossed another, and then a third, to split out into two more which deepened and never seemed to end?

Pumpkin felt Privet’s paw tighten on him, and trembled, and he looked where she looked, through the light to what had at first seemed the far end of the chamber, but which he now saw was its centre. What lay beyond he had no idea. There, raised a little from the ground, caught in light so bright it was almost lost, was a dais of a kind he thought he knew.

“Privet,” he whispered – and looked nervously about, for that whisper raced away, grew, and threatened to become something uncontrollable. Why, poor Pumpkin could hardly speak at all, so consuming of him was that almost-sound.