Duncton Quest

Prologue

Tryfan was born of Bracken and Rebecca, whose tale is the first part of Duncton’s history. The great task that they began, which was to show allmole the Silence of the Stone, bold Tryfan now continues.

For he grew to have faith and strength, and was entrusted with the task of accompanying old Boswell, holy mole, White Mole, safely back to the Holy Burrows of Uffington. And with Boswell to take the seventh Stillstone, the last one, to its rightful place so that the true silence of the Stone might be heard. So they set off from Duncton Wood in hope and faith.

But even as they left, the chill winds of the Word were already spreading across the land, whispering falseness to the weak, giving corrupt succour to the lonely, confusing the minds of the lazy, filling the void in the hearts of the faithless, offering power to the clever and astute.

With the coming of the Word shadows lengthened over moledom, faster and deeper, engulfing even Uffington, and it became lone Tryfan’s great and terrible task to lead those few who had the strength on a quest to protect the light and silence of the Stone against the shadows and the corrupted ones who came.

Few moles to the many, and led by one who held no power but that which comes from a spirit of truth and love. One who was hunted and reviled, cast out and punished. One whom the very Stone itself seemed to wish to crush to nothingness.

This book is Tryfan’s story and tells how the Stone demanded of him a courage, a purpose and a faith rarely wreaked of anymole. It tells of how Tryfan became the greatest scribemole of his time, and of how his work, his loyalty and his love prepared the ground for the coming of one who could call out to all moles from the Silence, that they might know what it was that Tryfan and his followers had sought with such courage.

So all you who once made a blessing upon Bracken and his Rebecca, share now in a petition for their son Tryfan; watch over him through the light and darkness of his journeying; help him with your love, and pray that he may return home at last, safeguarded.

Part I

Return to Uffington

Chapter One

March; and a cold north wind blew across the scarps and vales of Southern England, scurrying old leaves under hedgerows and into the newly opened entrances of tunnel and burrow. It tore at tree-buds and flurried the black feathers of sheltering rook. It whipped the stiff dead winter grass, and flayed the bare soil of ploughed fields. The land seemed withered, and all on it huddled miserably, waiting for change.

Among the rising heights of the grey beeches of the small copse which stands near the eastern foot of the great scarp of Uffington wherein the Holy Burrows lie, that same wind twisted and turned in the leafless branches, then whined low among the surface roots, sending a shiver to the snout and a shiver to the heart of any creature that might be hiding there. Like vole or squirrel, fox or subtle stoat.

Or mole…

Two moles crouched in the poor shelter of a beech tree’s surface roots, silent and close. One was Tryfan¹, son of Rebecca and Bracken. His full dark fur had a hint of the beauty and strength that had been his mother’s; his eyes and stance had the purpose and courage that had taken his father far, far from Duncton Wood and back again, through danger to body and spirit into a final silence with his mate which all moles desire. Yet Tryfan was still young and his stance had the impatience and uncertainty of youth, and he held his talons tensely as if expecting attack.

The second mole was old Boswell, most revered and mysterious of all the scribemoles of Uffington, finder of the seventh Stillstone. In all the annals of moledom, none has more honour than him. His name was spoken – will always be spoken – with reverence, and to this day many a mole touches his left paw with his right when a storyteller first mentions the name Boswell. For he was crippled as a youngster and lived his life lame, and for this reason needed help and protection on his journeys as a scribemole. By the time Tryfan first knew him, which was in Rebecca and Bracken’s final days in Duncton Wood, Boswell was old indeed, his face lined and, in repose, weary. But his eyes were ever full of care and love, and when he was comfortable and had fed, then he would smile and look about him with the eagerness of a pup; and when he spoke his voice was gentle and unhurried, as if time itself waited on him.

But now, crouched beneath the rising escarpment to Uffington, Boswell seemed fatigued, though an observant mole might have seen that even if his eyes were only half open as his snout extended over his good paw, they were watchful: the eyes of a wise mole thinking. Tryfan, who crouched at his side and a little behind, looked restless and impatient, a young adult male doing his best to keep his energy and purpose in check; waiting, as a young adult should, upon an elder. While before them rose the hallowed heights of Uffington’s great chalk escarpment, which they must climb before their journey’s end.

Long, long had they journeyed, Boswell and Tryfan, for from Duncton Wood to the Holy Burrows of Uffington is many a molemile, too many to count but in the cycle of seasons and passing of moleyears. And the Stillstone Boswell carried beneath his right paw was burdensome, as true Silence may be.

‘Still it blows, still it comes, even here in the very vale of Uffington,’ whispered Boswell, dimly snouting up to where the branches of the tree bent uneasily, and to where the sky beyond was grim grey with uneasy cloud.

‘But spring’s stirring underground,’ said Tryfan, trying to sound cheerful as he hunched his flanks against the cold and sought to keep the wind off Boswell. ‘We’ve had some good days and weeks, the snow has gone, and so will this wind.’

Boswell only shook his head in doubt, and Tryfan had to admit to himself that in all the long moleyears of their journey this frightening wind had rarely eased. It had been relentless and bitter, and had come to seem like a warning, a wind of danger and wrong purpose. A north wind which carried trouble before it, and stirred faction and dark change wherever it had been. A wind ancient in its dark impulse, deep in its dread effect. A north wind of warped spirits, and one which seemed to want to accompany them even to Uffington itself.

Their journey had been by the ancient secret ways known only to scribemoles, above the vales and avoiding contact with other moles. For Tryfan had had much to learn of scribing and the love of moles, and Boswell preferred solitariness and silence for his teachings, and, as a White Mole, was too conspicuous to be comfortable with other moles unless they were used to him. Indeed, in the one system they had come upon, which was three-quarters empty from the same plague and fires that had devastated the Duncton system before Tryfan was born, the few moles there had flocked to touch Boswell, as if he might heal them of the unease that had cast its shadow upon all systems these many moleyears past. Tryfan had had to rescue him from their attentions and firmly guide him back to the old tracks.

It is a hard lesson for a mole to learn that happiness and contentment, care and love, are experiences which pass like the summer breeze through a sun-filled vale, now here, now gone; and a mole had best enjoy them while he may. The rest – the memory, the hopes, the regret – are but echoes of the happiness that was or the glimmering of love that may be again.

So there came a time when Tryfan looked back on those moleyears with Boswell, regretting that he had not realised at the time how content he was, and excited, too, to be travelling in the company of one who taught him so much, with such kind and easy grace.

They had not travelled quickly, for Boswell liked to dally here and there, teaching his disciple the patience and the peace that comes with being still.

‘It does not matter what you contemplate provided it is something important,’ Boswell would say.

‘Such as?’ Tryfan had asked eagerly in the early months, snouting around as if he might find something important there.

‘Well,’ said Boswell, ‘almost anything is important except yourself, but few moles find time to think of anything else.’

Boswell had laughed a laugh that in time had made poor Tryfan angry, for however hard he tried it seemed impossible not to think of himself, or of things or hopes or dreams or ideas that wilfully attached themselves to ‘himself’.

But then, when Tryfan was quite sure how very hard it was to contemplate something ‘important’, Boswell took him up on to the surface one day in January to watch the changing light of day through snow. A contemplation that Tryfan became so absorbed in that when it was done, and Boswell ordained that they could return underground and eat, it seemed that a whole day had passed in what, to Tryfan, seemed a few moments. That was the first day that Tryfan had ever felt free of himself and began to hear the sound of Silence. The first time he saw he had contemplated something ‘important’.

In such quiet ways did Boswell teach him to know how to be at peace with himself so that, as their journey progressed, Tryfan learnt how a mole might meditate and carry always with him something of the Silence of the Stone.

‘Can a mole ever hear the Silence fully?’ Tryfan asked one day. ‘Hear it, and still be alive?’

Boswell thought for a moment and said, ‘Yes, yes a mole can, and perhaps a mole has in the past. It is the greatest thing to which a mole can aspire, to be at one with the Silence. I believe a mole will come who is of it.’

‘The Stonemole you mean?’ said Tryfan quickly, referring to the legendary mole who, the stories said, would one day come and free moles to hear the Silence for ever. Of him Boswell rarely said anything at all, except to say that he would come one day, and that would be a day indeed!

‘Ah, no, I am not talking of the Stonemole – his task is different. Through Him will all moles learn to have faith that they might hear the Silence, as scribemoles have faith. No, no, after Him one will come who will have found Silence. Soon after Him… yes, yes, Tryfan, soon then one will come. I know it will be so…’

Old Boswell lowered his snout when he said this and seemed suddenly tired, perhaps more than tired, and Tryfan saw an unusual weariness in his eyes. He turned away, and went off a little by himself muttering as he went, ‘One will come then, yes, one must come then.’ His voice seemed filled with sad hope and Tryfan, surprised at this sudden vulnerability in his master, went to him and touched him.

‘Can I do anything?’ he asked softly, and Boswell turned to him and stared at him and his old eyes filled with tears.

‘No, no, Tryfan, you learn well and you give me love and support. Out of faith one will come, after the Stonemole, after that and then I… then I…’ and Boswell wept. And as he wept it seemed the very tunnels wept, and the trees and grass above, and moledom itself, and Tryfan was distraught as well.

‘I don’t understand—’ he began. ‘I don’t… I can’t…’

‘I know you can’t,’ said Boswell at last, and in his eyes now was tenderness for the young mole, and love for him, and understanding, and Tryfan wept in his turn.

After that Boswell said no more, and for hours he was silent, contemplating some great sadness or joy, his body crouched and hunched, and his faded patchy fur ravaged as if he carried the whole of moledom in himself and was waiting until somemole came to help him.

Many times in that long wait did Tryfan of Duncton start forward towards Boswell, but always he stopped, sensing that for now his task was only to watch over him from a distance, helpless before the great trouble and struggle that seemed to have set upon him. Then dawn came, warmth, another day, and that unresolved shadow seemed to pass back into the darkness and confusion out of which it had come.

In such ways Tryfan learned that there was more to a White Mole than the simple goodness that was all most other moles saw in him, and if Boswell seemed weary at times it was less because of his age than because there was much in moles that might weary a mole who has known Silence. And, so long as Tryfan was able to see that Boswell’s care for other moles and his tolerance of the weariness they sometimes brought him was the result of the love he gave to them, so he came to love Boswell more, and might one day love other moles as well.

But there were things Boswell chose not to talk about, in spite of the hardest questioning from Tryfan, and one of them concerned the task that Tryfan himself might be given should he ever be allowed to be a scribemole. For Tryfan knew that all moles, whether scribemoles or not, have tasks ordained by the Stone, the fulfilment of which expresses the fullest potential of their strength or their intelligence, or simply their ability to live. For scribemoles, however, the tasks may be more formal, and in the gift of other more senior scribemoles to ordain until the time comes when a scribemole’s task is self-ordained, a solemn undertaking indeed, demanding – as it seemed to Tryfan – weighty consideration and self-knowledge.

Of this, even if it were true, Boswell would say little and answer less, observing that the sooner Tryfan stopped worrying about his task the sooner he might be ready to fulfil it. Yet in the final molemonths of their journey, when they came down from the chalk heights to the vales and met other moles once more, he could not but notice that Boswell directed him humbly to learn what he could of everymole and what concerned them, as if, in that direction, his task might one day lie.

As they had neared Uffington, one theme more than any other had run through the chatter of moles they met: the coming of the ‘Word’ which was seen as a message of strength and power, hope and security in a troubled world. Yet its existence, its very meaning indeed, was no more than a rumour among moles, and one that for a long time Tryfan assumed to be but the idle gossip and hope of moles who, having been afflicted by plagues and fire, now projected their hopes of the future in the coming of a deeper wisdom than the Stone itself, and called this wisdom the Word. It was coming, many a mole told them as they neared Uffington. ‘Aye, and when it does all will be well again, and these Stone-forsaken northern winds quite gone and spring return!’

So moles did say, hunching against the bitter winds that seemed to afflict a mole wherever he turned in those dark days, as bitter snout-shrivelling wind as ever was.

Then too, in those post-plague days, there were many rumours, telling of dark, dangerous moles travelling from the north of which the wind was the harbinger, casting fear into moles’ hearts and making many a system, already decimated and afflicted, places of fear and unwelcoming to travellers like Tryfan and Boswell. But Boswell did not dismiss this kind of gossip as mere superstition.

‘The Word?’ said Boswell. ‘Yes, it’s coming. Not too soon, I hope, for you have much to learn before that.’ But more he would not say, leading Tryfan back one last time to solitary routes as if to protect him from other moles and further knowledge of those lengthening shadows in which rumours of danger and the Word were intertwined. Then, somehow, in those final weeks of travel Tryfan came to see that whatever his task was it had to do with the coming of the Word, and that it was awesome, and that he had much to learn if he was to fulfil it; and that Boswell would reveal its nature to him when the time was right…

In the last days of their journey, Boswell had begun to talk to him differently, saying, ‘You must tell them… You will show them…’ and even, ‘Your task may be to make them see…’ as if all that he had taught Tryfan had been only so that he, Tryfan, might pass it on. As if he might be a teacher as Boswell was. And this troubled Tryfan, for the whole history of the journey, so far as his learning was concerned, was the discovery of how little he knew, and how little he had to say to other moles. Which, when he admitted it to Boswell, the scribemole laughed aloud at saying how true but how hard that truth was to teach!

So, in a spirit of humble confusion (as Tryfan was later to describe it), and after some last weeks of complete seclusion from other moles and with the north wind blowing cold and bitter as ever, they had reached at last the eastern end of Uffington…

… And thinking of the journey past and the task that might be ahead of him, Tryfan began to see that Boswell’s hesitation to start the final climb to Uffington might simply be reluctance to admit that the journey was finally done, and that change might be upon them.

‘We had better move,’ said Tryfan staring once more about the copse in which they had taken stance. ‘The morning is advancing and there are rooks about.’

Rooks are more irksome than mortally dangerous to moles, but since the last stage of the journey would be on the surface – there being no communal tunnels up to Uffington – Tryfan preferred not to be the object of the curiosity of rooks or any other avian. Rooks bring kestrel, and kestrel may bring hunting owl; and hunting owl is death. Yet still Boswell did not answer, or even stir.

‘What is it, Boswell?’ asked Tryfan irritably. ‘You’ve been crouched there brooding since dawn. Can’t we just get on with it? If you want food before we go I suppose I can find a worm or two about here…’ He looked reluctantly around the bleak copse, whose bare chalk surface was littered with beech leaves and was unpromising for worms, and, thinking the better of delaying their start further, he hastily added: ‘But surely the scribemoles will have food aplenty up in the Burrows?’

Tryfan had often daydreamed of the welcome the scribemoles would give them, and he knew that of all their number Boswell must now be the most honoured and the most revered. The more so because, after so many decades when it had been lost, he was bringing the seventh Stillstone back at last, whose return would herald the coming of Silence for allmole who sought it.

‘What is it?’ Tryfan asked again, but gently now and with more respect, coming closer and trying to do what Boswell had taught him to do: listen truly to another mole’s heart. For impatient though he was, Tryfan loved Boswell as his father Bracken had, more than the world, more perhaps than the Stone itself, and he would have run any risk and faced any danger, even death itself, to protect and honour him. Such had been his task when they set off from Duncton Wood, and though they had faced owl, water, fox and twofoots, and risked crushing at the black rush of roaring owl whose shining eyes can mesmerise the unwary, yet Tryfan had boldly protected old Boswell and grown from youth to warrior mole in the course of that journey. And wise mole too, who knew when to give Boswell space. So now Tryfan sighed, and settled down beside the beloved scribemole, to let him explain in his own time why he had stopped.

Sensing which, Boswell stirred and scratched himself, fretting at the lichen on the root at his side and snuffling half-heartedly at the humus of leaf and bark and twig. No worms there, just dank wetness.

‘I’m not sure, Tryfan, but I fear… I sense… I know not…’ and his voice trailed away to nothing, as the grey roots of the tree in whose protection they were hiding turned and twisted and lost themselves in the earth about them. ‘Or, rather, I know only too well,’ he added.

Above them, high in the trees, the March wind caught again at sharp young buds and shook them with memories of winter. Then it turned and swirled and redoubled its strength, to catch at the litter of leaves beneath the trees, and pull coldly at Tryfan’s strong fur, and the ragged white-grey coat of Boswell. Tryfan shuddered and said, ‘Surely we are so close now that we are within the protection of Uffington. In only another hour or two and we’ll be there, Boswell, safe and protected. Can’t we talk then?’

‘Ah! Yes! We can talk then, I suppose, but it may be rather too late. There are things I must tell you before…’

‘Before what?’ asked Tryfan in frustration at Boswell’s unusual reluctance to say what was on his mind.

‘Tryfan,’ said Boswell, his voice such a whisper that he seemed almost to be speaking to himself, ‘I am reluctant to move because I fear this journey’s end will bring our parting. I have tried to teach you what I know but there is so much more… The truth is I don’t want to let you go!’

‘But I’m not going! I don’t want to. I want to stay at Uffington and learn to be a scribemole. Is it that I have failed in that, being good only as a warrior for your protection?’

Boswell put his paw to Tryfan’s and said, ‘No, no that is far from the truth. You have learnt much of scribing, much of ancient lore, and you have learnt well and truly. Already you…’ he stopped again, snout low, tensely listening. ‘Trouble. Grief. Pity. Can you not feel them in the ground? They will mean that we must part. I fear that.’

Tryfan snouted about and said firmly, ‘I sense nothing of the sort. That’s just your usual doubts and fears, Boswell. Old age!’

Boswell’s eyes smiled. Sometimes Tryfan forgot himself and spoke as a son might, but Boswell did not mind, though he affected a certain disapproval. And it was true: he was not as strong as once he had been, old age brought aches and pains… and unnecessary doubts. There had been many times on the journey to Uffington when it had needed Tryfan’s youth and confidence to carry them forward. White Moles are not infallible.

Boswell peered about him and said, ‘Well, I fear I am right this time. For one thing I am surprised that scribemoles have not already come out to meet us, for surely news of our coming precedes us. For another… well… the very soil itself feels troubled. The roots, the trees, the wind.’

‘That’s just the beginnings of a storm, and so the sooner we—’

‘Yes!’ said Boswell rising suddenly. ‘It may well be the beginning of a storm. An ancient storm and one that will plunge all of moledom into darkness before it is done. But you are right. We had better get on and confront whatever we must in the Holy Burrows.’

‘But it can only be a welcome, Boswell.’

‘Can it?’ said Boswell, his bright eyes turning on Tryfan’s. ‘Feel the ground, Tryfan, feel it!’ And Tryfan snouted low and felt the ground as Boswell had taught him to, clearing his mind of the excitement of arrival and the expectation of the good things to come, and he sensed at last that it was ‘troubled’.

‘Yes, I sense it,’ said Tryfan. ‘What is wrong, Boswell?’

‘I don’t know,’ Boswell replied simply.

‘And why must we part?’

But Boswell did not reply. Instead he irritably set off, limping rapidly ahead with the energy that always surprised Tryfan. With barely any hesitation, and with the escarpment rising to their left, he took them on a route that went by hedgerow and long grass, in the shadow of ancient lynchets and across the dry valleys that ran down off the scarp face.

Boswell stopped only once, pausing briefly in a small wood that edged on to a way up a valley that cut up into the escarpment above them, and muttered, ‘The Blowing Stone, that’s up there. If this wind rises and veers west we will hear it before long. From here Uffington really begins.’

‘Yes!’ exclaimed Tryfan, a tremor of excitement in his voice because he could now feel the power of the Blowing Stone which was part of the Uffington legend, and had given sanctuary to many a mole, including his own father Bracken.

‘Can’t we just visit the Blowing Stone?’ said Tryfan as Boswell started off again. He regretted saying it the moment he spoke because Boswell turned sharply to him and said, ‘"Just visit it?" That you cannot do. It is an object of reverence, not idle curiosity.’ Then he hurried on, and Tryfan followed behind, looking humbled, but watchful as well for they were on open ground now with the great sky wide above them and he was beginning to feel, as Boswell did, that the air about them was troubled indeed; and by something more enduring than a bitter north wind.

Halfway up the steep chalk escarpment that forms the north edge of Uffington Hill, the ground levels off to the east and forms a great field of pasture. To the right, the west, the escarpment steepens and it was at this stage in their long ascent that there came to them, strong even against the wind, the odour of death. With it came a curious whining sound, sharp and strange, and a rasping or rattling of metal on wood. The combined effect was chilling and seemed to cast a darkness on the light of day.

They stopped together and took shelter in some long grass.

‘Stay here. I shall go forward,’ said Tryfan with authority, to which Boswell raised no objection. It was Tryfan’s task to see to such matters of danger, and one he did well. Though if he ever imagined that Boswell was waiting in suspense for his return during these reconnaissances, he would have been mistaken – it was Boswell’s habit, at such moments when he could do nothing useful, to crouch comfortably down and meditate, muttering a rhyme or invocation to himself, or even humming some scribemole song.

But he had barely got started before Tryfan was back, his face shocked.

‘There is no living mole about, alien or otherwise. So of such we need have no fear. Nor any other living creature except for rabbits out on the pasture. But there is something, Boswell, something terrible. You had better come and see.’

Tryfan led him up the tussocky slope towards the pasture. The odour they had smelt before was clearer but not much stronger – a dry, grim smell. Then ahead were the rising wooden posts of a fence between which stretched barbed wire.

It was from there, as the wind swept by, that the high whining sound came. Closer to, the wire vibrated savagely, seeming to give malevolent voice to the wind, turned its bitter sweepings into part moan, part howl and part scream. An effect which would have had anymole looking sharply over his shoulder as if expecting attack from an enemy.

But though this was bad enough, what was worse was the grim sight that had so shocked Tryfan and brought him running back to Boswell. For impaled on the barbs of the bottom rung of wire, their back feet just touching the grass below, were the bodies of two moles. Wind-bleached bones pierced through their dried skin and fur and their talons pointed up in arcs of agony to the barbs on to which they had been impaled, each one through the snout. The strong north wind swung them back and forth on the wire to give them an obscene semblance of life. The ear-rending windsound seemed like the echo of their screams and final moans.

Boswell said nothing but, advancing slowly along the wire, examined them. Finally he pointed mutely at their paws, each reaching up to the terrible barbs as if… if…

‘They were impaled alive,’ said Boswell quietly. ‘Each of them hung here alive.’

For a time Boswell said nothing but then he turned to Tryfan who saw that his eyes were filled with tears. Behind him hung the moles, and beyond that the rising downland heights of Uffington Hill, above which the sky was angry and bleak. For a time he could not speak. But then, as Tryfan went forward to comfort him in his evident distress, he turned back to the moles and whispered, ‘These are scribemoles of the Holy Burrows. From their worn talons and the greying fur they were old, too old to live in a normal system, especially in such stressful times as these.’

‘But how could they be so impaled?’ asked Tryfan.

Boswell shrugged. ‘I have heard of such a thing with twofoots, trapping creatures live and then putting them on a wire like this. But that is usually near a wood and involves other creatures such as crow and vole. Here, alone, like this… I fear…’

‘Yes?’ said Tryfan.

‘Othermole.’

Tryfan gasped in disbelief and horror. Other mole?

‘Do not think that mole would not do this as well. The records show that snouting such as this has been done by mole.’

‘Whichmole?’ said Tryfan, his voice shaking.

‘In ages past. As punishment. On barbs of blackthorn, or even wire where it hangs low enough, as here. It is the cruellest death. It is a punishment best not survived, for moles so hurt would be in living death.’ Tryfan knew why, for a mole’s snout is more than smell, it is touch and sight as well. If a snouted mole survived he would be so badly maimed he would be defenceless and lost. Only in fights to death do moles talon – thrust at each other’s snout.

‘But on scribemole?’ wondered Tryfan.

‘Well…’ hesitated Boswell, staring again at the bodies and then out over the vale of Uffington and north beyond it. ‘There are few records, but in the northern reaches of moledom, where the ground rises to impassable wormless moors, others live who are not believers in the Stone.’

‘Grike moles, giants!’ said Tryfan. ‘Such as my mother told me stories of. Stoneless moles.’

‘Aye, some call them grikes,’ said Boswell. ‘But among themselves they use another name.’

‘Which is?’ asked Tryfan impatiently.

‘They are moles of the Word,’ said Boswell looking bleakly at the snouted moles. ‘This is punishment by the Word.’

Tryfan was aghast, for all that he had heard moles say of the Word was hopeful and promising. Not like this. Then he felt stricken with awe, and the sense of what his task might be became clearer. He said nothing but went closer to Boswell.

Boswell seemed unaware of his disquiet, but continued his account of snouting. ‘We know that these grikes punished visiting scribemoles with snouting. Of that, sadly, there are records through the ages. No southern mole has been there for many tens of years, more than a century perhaps, for the reign of plagues has been long and has weakened moles as it weakened other creatures, and the scribemoles had enough to do in the regions of the Seven Systems. But I cannot be sure. This may be an accident of some kind to do with the wind, it may be twofoots rather than mole. But it is ominous, and makes me worry even more at the sense of trouble I feel about Uffington.’

‘They have been there a long time,’ said Tryfan eventually.

‘Nearly a full cycle of seasons, certainly long before Longest Night.’ Boswell’s voice was cold now, assessing the evidence. His tears were gone.

‘These bodies have dried in strong sun, such as we had soon after we left Duncton Wood. That, followed by the freezing weather for so long, has helped preserve them.’

‘Why did owls not take them?’

‘The power of scribemoles is great and fearful to other creatures, even hunting owls. How else have scribemoles survived their traditional journeys to the Seven Systems and beyond?’

Boswell turned to the killing wire and raised a taloned paw and began to chant.

‘What is their death, oh stone?

Death of toil and of repentance,

Death of joy and of peace,

Death of grace and of forgiveness,

Death of hope and of despair.

Grant them what there is in death oh Stone:

Silence.’

As he spoke this last solitary word the sound of the wind in the wire seemed to die, and from off to the east came a different sound, deeper and reverberant. To them it came in a deep note, and then again, and then once more. It was the haunting sound of the Blowing Stone.

‘May they know the Silence of the Stone,’ said Tryfan softly.

‘May it be so,’ concluded Boswell.

Even as he said it a storm of wind broke about them with a roar, and then across the face of the escarpment; it battered at the uprights of the fence, stressed the barbed wire between them, and swung the bodies of the moles ever more violently until first one and then the other fell off the barbs to break across the grass; the bones and fur lifted like feathers and were blown away with the wind. Tryfan watched this in wonder, though he had little doubt that it was quite in Boswell’s power to so provoke the wind and release the moles from their torment in death.

‘Come,’ cried Boswell above the noise of wind. ‘We will find an entrance to the Holy Burrows.’

‘But what will we find there? And what of the greater trouble you spoke of?’ shouted Tryfan back.

‘We shall find whatever it is that the Stone wishes us to find,’ replied Boswell.

Then they ran on uphill and even as the wind seemed to redouble its efforts to pull them from the steep side of the escarpment and hurl them to the vales far below they found a tunnel entrance and entered it, to make their escape into the silence of the most sacred burrows of moledom.

Chapter Two

The tunnel they found themselves in was narrow, but dry and made in the old way, its walls arching elegantly upward and its roof well finished. In consequence it had a pleasant airiness of sound, absorbing the wind-stresses from the grass above, though the whining of the barbed wire was carried down into the soil by the fence posts and was loud, its vibration unpleasant to the paws.

The floor was dusty and in places covered by black and withered grass roots which had tumbled from among the living ones lacing the ceiling and higher sides. These had a pleasing green-white colour which combined with the grey of the chalk to give the light in the tunnels the peaceful hallowed quality for which Uffington was famous.

But it was evident to both of them that nomole had passed this way for many a month, though vole and weasel had both left spoor at the entrance, probably while sheltering from a predator. In the tunnel itself the chalk dust was thick on the ground and in wall crevices, so that as they went along their coats became white with it.

‘This is quite a place, Boswell,’ whispered Tryfan as the old mole hurried on ahead. ‘It turns even a novitiate like me into a White Mole in no time at all. As for you, you’ll disappear altogether if you get any dustier!’

‘That is my ultimate intention, as a matter of fact,’ said Boswell, ‘to disappear altogether! But it is taking time; and so are you with idle chatter. Come! There’s a worm-rich stretch higher up and since I know it’s food you’re after we’ll stop there to feed and rest before venturing on into the main system.’ He laughed gently, instinctively speaking softly, for, apart from a natural reverence for the place, they both knew that in tunnels such as these talk travels, and neither could guess what dangers lay ahead.

So they went steadily and cautiously uphill through tunnels that became progressively bigger and more airy. They had a sense of ancient holiness and here and there the chalk was carved with ancient script. Sometimes, too, the tunnels seem to have been especially aligned with the great flints that the chalk held, stones with which Tryfan was familiar from the Ancient System in Duncton Wood, but these in Uffington were on a more massive scale. On their convoluted surfaces, and across their polished faces where they were broken, sound seemed changed and lost, echoing away to come back minutes later from other flints.

More than once Tryfan started back into a defensive stance, mistaking the echoes of their own pawsteps for attacking moles and finding that he was raising his talons to his own shadow. It needed an effort of concentration to keep a sense of direction, but Boswell had trained him well and he did not lose his way when Boswell went ahead too fast and was out of sight for a while.

Eventually Boswell stopped. ‘We’re nearing the main system now,’ he said in a low voice. ‘So we will go even more carefully.’

‘In case there are alien moles about?’

‘That, and the fact that these are the Holy Burrows. Respectful quiet is expected from all moles here. From scribemoles, silence, unless speech is essential, which it rarely is. But just ahead we may eat and rest, and pause awhile. I suggest, Tryfan, that you do as I do and think a little upon our journey past and find strength for the days to come.’ Boswell’s ‘pausing awhiles’ were his term for meditation, and Tryfan knew it could take hours. He resigned himself to a long wait.

Soon after this the soil darkened and the chalk fell away beneath them: they had run into a deposit of clay and flints which was replete with food and comfortable burrows.

‘Guest quarters,’ whispered Boswell. ‘Your father once stayed here.’

Tryfan found food and they settled down to crunch a few worms and recover from the shocks and effort of this final stage of their journey.

‘Think a little upon our journey,’ Boswell had said… but now they were here, and they were safe, Tryfan felt tired, terribly tired, and as Boswell began a formal meditation Tryfan found his thoughts drifting, despite all he could do, with his body warm and his talons relaxing, as around him the White Mole’s thanksgiving for a safe homecoming seemed to fill the old place with images of the moleyears of travel and toil it had taken them to get here, and replace them one by one with the light of Silence, as if those dangers had not been.

‘A scribemole does not dwell on dangers past, or dangers yet to come; nor on what might be or might have been. A scribemole strives for the Silence that is here now for all to hear. But at a time of homecoming a scribemole thanks the Stone for the grace of returning and so now I thank the Stone…’ Boswell’s words were half instruction, half prayer but Tryfan began to have difficulty hearing them, for around Boswell was a light, white and pure, and Tryfan wanted to reach his whole body into it.

‘B – Bos – B—’ But Tryfan seemed unable to say Boswell’s name.

‘Sleep now, Tryfan, sleep and rest, for you have completed your task and brought me home to Uffington safeguarded. Now your new task will begin and you will need strength for the trials ahead that you will face alone.’

‘New task… alone…’ Boswell’s words sounded a note of alarm in Tryfan’s heart in the moments before sleep, or a dreaming unconsciousness, overtook him. Certainly afterwards Tryfan never quite knew if he slept or not. He remembered being unable to move, unable to speak, unable to be anything but at the centre of images that Boswell conjured up about him with his incantations and thanksgivings.

He sensed that Boswell was near him, touching him, and that there was a deep Silence over the burrow out of which came Boswell’s voice… ‘He has learnt worthily, Stone, but he is young. He knows not yet what he already knows and so he will feel fear and suffer doubt and loss. But he is the one I have found and on whom thy burden will rest. Guide him, give him strength, let him hear, let him…’ And Tryfan wanted to raise himself from his waking sleep and ask Boswell or the Stone or whatever it was that spoke, ask him, ask it… ‘Bos – B—’ but his talons were as weak as a pup’s and his eyes could not see as that voice repeated, ‘Sleep, rest…’ and Tryfan was a pup again, running up the tunnels away from his siblings and out into the sunlight of Duncton Wood whose scents were warm with summer, whose light was dappled and fresh, whose trees were comforting and whose Stone stood high in the centre of the Ancient System. There was Rebecca his mother and Bracken his father and Comfrey his half-brother to go and see… but Tryfan chose instead to wander free in that great wood until one day when he was older his path turned to the Stone, before which he crouched in awe wondering if he could dare think that he, Tryfan, might become a scribemole: ‘Why does a mole have to travel so far just to find himself in the same place?’ he had asked the Stone later, when he had matured; and it had been then that Boswell had found him. And now, he was there again, and sensed the wonder of Duncton Wood about him, its green old vales and its rich pattern of tunnels which were his own, and he felt content that he was of it, and it forever of him; but he felt finally a sadness that he had to leave it, and a deep desire that one day the Stone might allow him to return and not rove again from the system he loved.

‘Wake up, it is time now; time for us to go on.’

Boswell’s voice was normal again and the burrow filling with dawning light, but Tryfan still had difficulty emerging from the deep warm reveries into which his rest had sent him. The trees of Duncton and a past that seemed so long ago rose still about him, but fading now, drifting from his reach.

‘B – Bos – Boswell,’ he managed to say at last. ‘Will I return to Duncton Wood safeguarded?’ Even as he spoke it his eyes were full of tears, for he suddenly missed the place where he had been born, missed it as if only at this moment, so long after leaving it, did he feel it had been taken from him.

‘Well? Will I?’

Boswell stared at him, his bright eyes distantly troubled.

‘You will have much to do before that. Before then you will return but only to recover yourself and those who may be with you. But yes, one day you will return finally to your home system, as each mole should.’

‘Will you be there, Boswell?’

‘I will always be there,’ said Boswell quietly. ‘For I will be with you…’

‘No, will you be there?’

‘If you have faith in the Stone, and if you can see me, then I will be there.’

‘You’re sad Boswell, and on all our journey you have never been that. Until… yesterday, by those snouted moles.’

‘Our journey together is over now, so I am sad. A White Mole has feelings, you know.’

‘I know,’ said Tryfan. ‘Have I slept long?’

‘Night has passed, day has come.’

‘I wanted to keep awake. You were saying blessings and prayers that I should know.’

‘Why should you know them?’

‘If ever I am to become a scribemole…’

‘Feed now, and groom,’ said Boswell, refusing to respond to this at all, ‘and we will go.’

Then Tryfan was fully awake, never more so, full of energy, and, after due pause for a thanksgiving for the day to come, as Boswell had taught him, he rose and said, ‘Now, I suggest I go ahead for we cannot be sure whatmole may be here and whether they are friend or foe.’

‘I have heard none,’ said Boswell.

‘H’m,’ said Tryfan doubtfully, for Boswell being old was inclined to miss the subtler sounds and vibrations. In any case, there was confusing windsound now about the tunnels, whispers and echoes that might be mole, or might be dustfalls.

‘You stay just behind and guide me by touch whether to go right or left, for you know these tunnels,’ said Tryfan firmly. ‘We had better not risk talking.’

So, close as shadows, Tryfan began their advance into the Holy Burrows, not in triumph and celebration as he had always hoped, but in silence and with caution, lest there was danger for the mole whose protection he still felt was his task.

At first the tunnels seemed little different than those they had lately been following; a little wider perhaps, a little more worn. But soon they subtly changed, their walls being polished with great use and age, their floors shiny with the passage of a hundred thousand talons and there was about them an awesome sense of reverence and peace. Their pawfalls echoed softly ahead, and above them ran the air currents of a system designed in ages past by moles who knew how to set an entrance and make a turn so that a tunnel was in balance both with itself and the system of which it was a part. Though of this great skill Boswell had observed more than once that tunnels and systems, however cleverly they may be designed, are likely to be only as harmonious as the moles who make them.

They passed several passages off to right and left, the portals richly embossed and decorated in a way Tryfan had not observed before. There were, too, at regular intervals, slipways up to the surface, whose windsound was gently controlled by the earth and chalk above them. Once or twice they heard the soft stomp of sheep’s hooves above; and once the patter of rabbit. Each sound was well conveyed, as it should be in a well-made system, but with such precision that Tryfan could scarcely believe it.

The tunnels themselves were deserted and, as they had been throughout their progress on Uffington Hill, dust-covered. They came across only one roof-fall, and that a minor one.

Tryfan stopped finally only when he came to a major junction, turning to Boswell to whisper, ‘Which way here?’

‘Left is the Chapter Burrow, right goes to the communal tunnels and the Holy Library,’ Boswell replied. ‘Go left.’

The tunnel ahead was narrower than before, and dark, and some natural caution had Tryfan proceeding with special care. There was something about the air currents that suggested blockage ahead, or a mole lying in wait.

The tunnel turned ahead of them and they slowed, stopped, and listened. There was no sound, and the ground ahead was dusty and showed no tracks, but even so Tryfan raised a paw silently to indicate to Boswell that he intended going ahead alone, and then advanced, taking the tunnel’s turn carefully, ready for attack.

The currents of air above him were confused, and whatever was blocking the tunnel seemed near. Gathering his courage together Tryfan advanced rapidly round the turn to where the tunnel straightened and stopped quite still, unable at first to make sense of the grim sight before him. There was the portal that led into the great Chapter Burrow, but beneath it, turning, broken, wretched, crouched… or lay, the remains of a long-dead mole. But more than that: from the disposition of the body, from the fact that the skull – ‘head’ was too generous a word for so perished a thing – lay some way from the trunk, and one of the back paws was some way to the other side. The mole had not simply been killed: it had been ripped apart.

From the fur, which was well preserved on one side, it was obvious that the mole had been very old, and whatever mole had killed him had done it cruelly with a ripping blow to the belly and others that had severed the head and paw. Boswell came softly along behind Tryfan to observe the scene for himself.

And there was worse. Beyond this mole, who seemed to have been retreating into the Chapter Burrow, Tryfan and Boswell saw more, piled into grotesque attitudes of violent death, and two against a far wall appeared to have been taloned where they crouched.

Boswell said nothing, but stared at these horrific sights, reaching out instinctively to touch Tryfan, as if, in that touch, there was affirmation that moledom was not only filled with cruelty and death but held life and goodness as well.

Then they heard a sound: a sudden running, the hint of talons scampering on dusty chalk, and they froze and waited, but it did not occur again.

‘Rabbit? Vole?’ said Boswell, adding almost lightheartedly, ‘irreverent as ever they were!’ It was almost as if, the shock of the murdered scribemoles before him, he was trying to ignore it.

‘Ssh!’ whispered Tryfan, alert and listening. Then, when the distant sounds had ceased, he whispered urgently, his voice shocked, ‘What’s happened here? What is all this?’ He moved forward and pointed wearily to yet another body, barely aware that Boswell did not seem surprised.

‘It is of the Stone,’ said Boswell cryptically.

They turned out of the Chapter Burrow and started back the way they had come and then on to find the tunnels leading to the Holy Library, advancing down them cautiously lest they find other bodies. But their caution, and reserve, did not last long for soon they did find others, and from now on, wherever they went, they seemed to find the bodies of murdered scribemoles. Whatever and however the massacre had taken place it had been ruthless and sudden. There seemed to have been little attempt to escape.

So widespread was the evidence of death that soon both began to get used to it. Perhaps fortunately the bodies were now dried and odourless, though here and there near entrances was evidence of predation from outside. Stoat or weasel, perhaps.

More than that, there was recent life about, for they could see that the floor had been recently crossed, and recrossed. A mole, or moles, and they had dragged something through the tunnels, though nothing as big as a mole’s body which, in the circumstances, might have been logical. But the only talon marks they found were of solitary moles, vagrants probably, who must have made their way into the system in the recent past.

‘They are still here, somewhere,’ said Tryfan, ‘for these are fresh tracks. But at least the talon marks are those of a weak mole or moles.’

Boswell agreed. And, more relaxed, said, ‘Let us go to the Library itself now, though I doubt after this that there will be much to see. Perhaps, though, we can recover something of the books there…’

‘Nomole would dare damage such relics,’ declared Tryfan, shoulders hunching for a fight.

‘We might have said nomole would touch scribemoles. But moles have. Moledom is not changing, Tryfan. It has changed.’

At Boswell’s direction Tryfan, still cautious, led the way out of the main complex of tunnels and the communal burrows to the one that he said led off to the Library. As he turned into it he stopped suddenly and pointed. The tracks they had observed earlier were very recent here, and there was scent of life.

With Tryfan taking the lead and hunched ready for mortal fight if such was necessary, they advanced down the tunnel, the air heavy with tension. It was a rougher tunnel than some of the others, more ancient, and with the tension was mixed a deep awe, for Tryfan knew that at last he was near the fabled Library of the Holy Burrows, the greatest repository of records and folios in the whole of moledom. This was the very intellectual heart of the scribemole’s life, from down here all the greatest scribings were said to have come, or been done, through the long ages of mole.

Suddenly the hushed and tense silence was broken in a way so dramatic and unexpected that it had them stopping still immediately and crouching low, looking at each other in surprise. For, at first distantly and then rather louder, came the welling sound of pawsteps accompanied by voices. It was so unexpected that for a moment they could not tell from where it came, but then it clarified, the echoes much less, the sound dying for a moment, and they knew it came from the tunnel ahead, where the Library lay.

Then louder again and frightening, the sound of talon tread, of paws marching, and a roaring as of many voices. Tryfan immediately hunched back protectively with Boswell behind him, pushing him almost into the wall and looking behind to consider their best line of retreat.

‘If I was alone, Boswell, I might go quietly ahead and see what I can see,’ whispered Tryfan. ‘One mole always moves better than two. But my task is still to get you to a place of safety. It’s no good unnecessarily—’

As he spoke the approaching sounds grew louder still and Tryfan began to try to herd Boswell away as if he were a family of pups.

But Boswell was not moving. Not that Tryfan expected him to show fear – he seemed to have forgotten how to feel such a thing decades ago – but at least he might have a sensible concern for his own life.

‘The sounds have not actually materialised, have they?’ he said calmly. ‘In fact they seem to be dying away again. Strange that!’

Tryfan looked at him quizzically, and more so because he was smiling slightly.

Then, thinking swiftly, and looking much calmer himself, Tryfan said, ‘Fine, then we’ll pretend to retreat!’ and with that he thumped his paws and rattled his talons on the tunnel floor, even shouting out in a fading kind of voice: ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ And then they froze into silence to see what happened.

Ahead of them the tunnel turned out of sight, the turn demarcated by an abutment of flint. Beyond it, Boswell had said, was the final few feet of tunnel to the Library portals.

There was silence for a few moments, and then, briefly, a final roaring of rushing moles and warlike voices all of which came to an abrupt stop and once more did not materialise. A long silence followed, in which Tryfan hardly dared breathe. Then, beyond the tunnel turn there was the slightest movement, so slight indeed that it was evident only from a marginal change of the air current over their backs from the top of the tunnel.

Then there was the shuffle of timid talon on chalk. Then a sigh and cough, rather nervous. Then a muttering by mole, solitary mole, very solitary mole indeed, and a gulping sound as of timid, solitary, nervous mole summoning up courage to move down the tunnel towards them.

Tryfan began to move forward himself, so smoothly and with such grace that he was like a fox in the final moments of taking static prey. The shuffling head became bolder and a voice said, ‘Better take a look old fellow. Come on, just round the corner. Just to check they’ve gone.’

Tryfan stopped still, only feet from the turn. The shuffling approached. They heard breathing, nervous and short. Then a humming as of a mole trying to make himself believe there is nothing to be afraid of.

Then round that flint came a whisker, then a snout. Rather a thin one, rather long.

Then the voice again, preceded by a sniffing and a snouting. ‘Mole was here. I can smell mole. Good smell that. Gone now.’

Then the snout came forward again and beneath it a thin paw of weak talons. Tryfan had shrunk back into the wall of the tunnel to take advantage of the great flint’s shadow. Boswell was further back, his already pale and now very dusty coat making him hard to see.

Then the mole’s head and upper part of his body came into view, a weak-looking thin-looking mole doing his very best to be bold and resolute.

‘Gone they have and good riddance. Up to no good. Bet they were scared.’ Sniff sniff. ‘But it’s good to smell mole. Mmm. Wait! May come back! Gone but may return. Well, old fellow, you’d better do one more.’

The mole disappeared back around the corner, or at least his front half did, and there was a brief scratching of talons and, to Tryfan’s astonishment, the threatening sound of an army of moles surged up again before suddenly dying away and the mole muttering irritably to himself: ‘Oh bother, I’ve broken my talon!’

Tryfan advanced round the corner and saw the mole beside an extraordinary scribing on the wall, down which presumably he had dragged his talons and produced the sound.

‘Greetings!’ said Tryfan calmly.

‘Oh!’ cried out the mole. ‘Oh!’ And turning round saw Tryfan’s large and menacing form and nearly tripped over himself in his alarm. Tryfan backed respectfully away and to his surprise the mole advanced upon him, crying out as boldly as he could, ‘And well you might! Retreat! Get away before my many friends, who are very close behind me, come and kill you. Yes!’ But Tryfan merely stopped, and immediately the mole did the same.

‘Retreat!’ he said again, a command no doubt meant to be threatening but which came out more like a mole choking on a dead worm. He gulped and stared along his thin snout at Tryfan and said, ‘Whoever you are you’re not coming past me. I’ve got a whole army of moles behind me. I’m their…’ He looked down at his unwarlike paws and pale talons. ‘…Er, adviser. Take my advice and go away. Don’t push me too hard for I am a killer! Yes indeed!’

‘What is thy name?’ asked Boswell from his more distant shadows.

‘Oh!’ and then, ‘oh dear!’ exclaimed the mole, turning and tripping over himself at this new threat. ‘Two of you eh! Two against the many. Brave moles indeed!’