Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  “Look!” cried out Marram suddenly, pointing a talon ahead as if he had seen something vast. “I thought... it was dark, Alder, huge...” But it was gone, hidden by mist.

  They pressed on, getting colder and more tired by the minute, but neither complained of that.

  Then Cwm stopped, though why neither could have said, for there was no sign of way or tunnel or anything at all.

  “The mist will clear shortly,” he said.

  “Looks as if its thickening to me,” grumbled Marram. Their fur was wet with particles of mist and hail.

  “You get to know the run of the mist in these parts or you die young,” said Cwm grimly. “It’ll clear northward first.” They turned to look downslope.

  Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, it did. Not near to them – the driven mist from the valley below still swirled up just below their line of sight – but far across the valley they sensed but could not see, over the mist that lay in its depths, there was a sudden lightening and then it cleared to reveal an astonishing sight.

  For the sun was shining in the far distance, and lighting on the peaks that rose there, or at least on all but one that lay a little beyond them, its lower half hidden. But two nearer peaks were clear, and a third that lay off to the right, further even than the shrouded one.

  “What are their names?” asked Alder.

  “The furthest is still in the Carneddau, and that is Carnedd Dafydd, or Dafydd for short. The two nearer ones are Glyder Fawr on the left and Glyder Fach on the right,”

  “Glyder!” repeated Alder, for that was the name of the Siabod leader.

  “The one in cloud, that’s...” began Cwm.

  But he was interrupted by Marram, who had turned to look behind them and had been so awestruck by what he saw that he instinctively touched Alder’s flank, as if to speak would have brought a wrath of rock down upon them.

  For the mist had nearly all gone and there rose bleak Siabod, towering above them, awesome and majestic, its faces sheer and dark and quite unreachable. Cloud played at its highest part, drifting across its face and hiding from time to time its uttermost peak.

  “Aye, that’s Siabod,” said Cwm with reverence. They stared at it for a long time before Alder turned back to look once again at the mountains Cwm had been naming. Mist still came up from the valley but it was thinning, swirling, now deep, now light, playing on the ground before them. There were shapes in it, dark and fearsome, like sheep, like mole. None of them spoke, the wind seemed wild, beyond it all and across the valley, the four peaks rose, the same one still shrouded in mist.

  Cwm was silent, staring ahead, while Marram had come closer to Alder, and both had taken stance, for the shapes in the mist were coming nearer and were moving, steadily moving upslope towards them, huge and menacing, three of them; moles.

  Then the mist was swept clear and three huge moles crouched before them, two to the left side, and one off to the right, and they had taken stance as if in echo of the mountains that rose so mightily in the distance behind each of them, with a gap where that shrouded mountain rose.

  Then, seeing them there, Alder knew their names.

  “These are the moles who have trekked from Duncton,” said Cwm, and Alder and Marram lowered their snouts respectfully.

  “My name is Dafydd,” said the largest of the moles, the one behind whom Carnedd Dafydd rose in the distance.

  “Mine is Fach,” said the second deeply.

  “And mine Glyder,” said the last, behind whom Glyder Fawr rose, “and you are most welcome.” He spoke slowly, with a rich and accented voice of great authority. All three were large, all three greying of fur but very fit, all three strangely similar. Not just to each other, but, as it seemed to Alder, to another mole he knew: big, dark, authoritative, yet younger.

  “You know who we are, moles, do you?” said Glyder.

  Alder was lost for words. They had come up out of the mist, they were named after the mountains behind them, they seemed so familiar to him, he felt he must know who they were.

  Then, as he stared at them he saw the clouds shifting from the single peak they had still been clinging to. Dark grey it was, and it seemed almost to rise in the air as the mist about it cleared. But of all the peaks it was the only one that held no sunshine. So darkly it rose, huge and awesome.

  Glyder saw where Alder and Marram looked and half turned to look there too.

  “That is Tryfan,” he said. “Tryfan on which the Stones which the moles of Siabod were born to protect stand. Yes, moles, that is Tryfan!”

  Then as Alder looked and saw where Tryfan rose, which was in that gap between great Dafydd and Fach, he knew what moles these were; he knew.

  For had not Tryfan told him that when his mother came to Siabod she gave birth to a litter of pups, up on these very slopes? And that though born in the open they survived?

  “You know what moles we are?” said Glyder. There was longing in his voice and a terrible faith.

  “You were of Rebecca born,” said Alder. “You are the half-brothers of Tryfan of Duncton.”

  “We are,” they said.

  “But the fourth, there was a fourth,” said Alder softly.

  “The Stone took him,” said Fach. “When we were young it took him. He was greater than all of us, and stronger, but he left his love in us.”

  “His name?” whispered Alder.

  They looked behind them at where Tryfan rose.

  “Our mother named him Y Wyddfa, after the eagles that once flew here. But he died, see, and he did so saving us. Of that we’ll tell you soon enough. But when we first heard of Tryfan and his deeds, and where he came from, we knew whatmole he was and what he would do. We knew he was our brother later born.”

  “We knew that well enough!” said Dafydd.

  “What will he do?” asked Marram.

  “He will prepare moledom for the coming that will be! He will carry on his shoulders the very Silence of the Stone, as the great peak after which he is named carries the Stones we three and this system protect. But he’ll need help. Nomole alone can do what he will try to do.”

  “We hoped —” And as they spoke it was not clear which was speaking for the wind was strong and their voices deep like a chorus of belief and hope across the mountains. “We dreamed that he himself would come. But now we know he has sent another in his place, to guide us, to teach us, to show us what we must do!”

  “Me?” said Alder in some alarm. It was as if the very mountains themselves were electing him their leader. Then the mountains laughed to see his discomfort.

  “You!” said Glyder.

  “And where are the other Siabod moles?” asked Alder smiling, for he sensed the rightness of their words, and felt the power of the Stone was all about these parts.

  “We’ll show you.”

  With that they led them upslope some more, until they reached a tunnel as huge as any Alder and Marram had ever seen. An arched twofoot tunnel in the slate.

  As the others went ahead, Alder paused at its entrance to look behind him in time to see the clouds swirl, and in the distance he saw first one peak and then the next engulfed. Then, at the last, only Tryfan stood clear, and for a moment sunlight was on it all alone. Then cloud came, and Tryfan was gone, and Alder felt bereft.

  “Come on, mole!” shouted a warm voice from the tunnel. “Siabod waits to welcome you!” Then, with a shudder at the chill winter air outside, he turned from the mist-driven day and went underground.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tryfan’s journey into the final reaches of the Wen with Spindle, Mayweed and Starling, began without them moving a paw at all as they listened to old Rowan’s tale of why he waited by that foul tunnel leading eastwards, and whatmole he waited for.

  “Three of us came one summer, more than four Longest Nights ago, when I was hardly more than a youngster. We were all reared in Ickenham, which lies west of where fat Corm has his den. It was a proud system once but a roaring owl way was made there by twofoots some y
ears before we were born and the system was all but destroyed.

  “That summer had been hot, and my sister Haize and I were persuaded by my friend Heath to explore eastwards. We knew the legends well enough, of moles living there and saviours and all of that, but really we went for fun not enquiry. Heath was stronger than I and more adventurous. Perhaps he just wanted companions for a day or two’s exploration.

  “Haize went because she liked him, I went out of loyalty because he had saved my life when a roaring owl nearly crushed me. I panicked but Heath did not, pushing me out of the way and nearly getting caught himself. He was not especially big but he had courage, a kind of mad courage. There are moles like that, aren’t there?”

  Tryfan looked around at his group and smiled, murmuring his agreement that indeed there were! Of even madder courage, perhaps.

  So, the carefree youngsters had set off, and since they were not threatened by predators or twofoots, and the weather was good and food easily come by, they journeyed on, soon discovering that all the stories of the eastward dangers were exaggerated. Even better, there were some moles about who would pass the time of day and advise on how to proceed a few more miles. So the days ran on and soon they found they had been gone a full molemonth and still not turned back or seen anything really worth telling others about.

  “We saw dangers it’s true, but nothing we could not cope with,” said Rowan, his eyes warm and gentle with the memory, in contrast to the ravage of some terrible event that haunted him still, as a talon-thrust across the face may scar for life. So, though his eyes were gentle, his face was coursed by fear, and a loss to which he was not reconciled.

  “As some of the tunnels were complex, Heath devised a way of talon-marking them so that at a junction we would always know which way we had come. He may have been mad but he was thorough, and those markings he made later saved my life.

  “The weather had worsened and, as is the way in August, there had been rain and cloud. But we were glad of it, for the dry spell had begun to reduce the worm supply and, worse than that, the warm weather seemed to bring out a danger we had not seen until then: rats.”

  When Rowan said that word for the first time, and he said it most reluctantly, he paused in his story as if to let the image from the word take shape in the burrow with them.

  “Have you seen a rat?” he asked.

  One by one they shook their heads. Snouted, yes. Sensed, yes. Seen, never.

  “Rats and rushing water are why nomole will ever reach the centre of the Wen. Nomole!” His voice had dropped to a horrified whisper and those grim lines of care on his face seemed to deepen into ugly shadows as he spoke, and Tryfan knew that whatever event had occurred to change Rowan’s life it had to do with rats, and water, and death.

  Then he looked back out of the burrow where they sheltered, stared at the arch of the tunnel entrance that seemed to obsess him, then up at the sky; owls roared. Yet suddenly he smiled.

  “By then I could see that my sister Haize and Heath were beginning to pair and I was reluctant to stay much longer with them. We had reached this very point where I tell you this story now, and had paused overnight by that tunnel you see there, and I did not want to go further. But Haize and Heath seemed unwilling to be alone, said I was wrong to want to leave them, and told me that we could all turn back after a few more days and head home to Ickenham. So I agreed to go on with them.” He paused again, looked at each of them, and said with a terrible seriousness, “Let all I tell you now be a warning to you to turn back while you can. Go not one step further. Not a single one. If you enter that tunnel as we did, you enter a world not made for mole, nor made, I think, for any living creature but those whose lives lurk in darkness, and who thrive on killing and the death of others.”

  Spindle shifted about uneasily; Mayweed seemed half asleep; Tryfan’s stance was firm, his attention total, while Starling stared at Rowan with wide and fascinated eyes, seeming not to believe that what she was hearing, or about to hear, was real at all, and even if it was then she was certain it would never happen to her.

  “Go on!” she urged and Spindle nudged her to be quiet: the events Rowan were describing was not a story but were real.

  “That archway that I stare at night and day leads after a short way out into a wasteland strange to mole. The filthy river that you hear and scent continues running eastwards making the wasteland’s northern boundary.”

  So the moles had risked the tunnel, ventured along a ledge that runs its length, and at its end found a great open space, derelict yet alive with creatures, concreted in parts yet abundant with vegetation, surrounded by twofoot structures yet wild at its centre.

  At first it had seemed wormful and good, though the pockets of soil were separated from each other by piles of unnatural red rock and poisonous sand, where only scratchy plants like knapweed grew. In some areas between these piles were puddles of water, in others rusting metaille hills and piles – mountains – of dead roaring owls.

  At this information Starling let out a little gasp of surprise and horror which expressed how the others felt, for in all their imaginings of the Wen they had never thought it might be so treacherous that it could kill a roaring owl.

  “At night there was life there, dangerous for us. The smell of fox, though we never saw one live. Dead yes – for we learnt (too late!) that the Wen kills all things – but not alive. There were voles aplenty, and weasels at the edges, and circling above by day and roosting at night black-headed seagulls, kestrel, and owls. But there was plenty of food to eat, and a mole that was cautious seemed safe enough.

  “In some places the vegetation was thick and smelt sweet and good with wormwood, and having no name for the place we called it the Wormwood Waste. It was there that for the first time we came upon rats, and we realised that what we were doing was dangerous and that the further we travelled the greater the risks might become.”

  The three moles had decided to stay for a time in this food-rich area before venturing to its eastern boundary where, they had agreed, they would probably turn back.

  They dallied, and Rowan forgot his earlier reservations about delaying more when balmy September weather came. The days drifted by pleasantly. Then one day, when the three of them were fortunately together, they turned a corner of one of the mounds of waste rock and found themselves face to face with a rat.

  “It was huge, had red eyes and it smelt. The ground about that point was greasy with its passage and I began to retch from disgust and fear. But Heath did not lose his courage, for he suddenly darted forward with a shout to us to follow and the rat snarled, flared up and then turned and left, its long tail following like a separate being after it into the two rocks between which it had squeezed and disappeared.”

  The moles might have retreated rapidly but the sudden backing off of the rat gave them confidence and they heard, as they paused in the waste ground after it had gone, the sound, coming from underground it seemed, of running turbulent water. A little exploration, in which they were careful to have somewhere to flee to lest they saw more rats, and they found a narrow culvert running north east, whose banks, though once sheer and made of squared rock, was ruinous and accessible to mole. They did not venture down into it, for fear of being trapped there and meeting rats, but followed its edge, their passage being cautious and watchful and therefore slow. Suspecting that the culvert would lead them down to the original stream which had brought them into the wasteland they followed it.

  Night came. The sky about them was lurid with light and noise and nearby they heard a cat take a roosting gull and then, in the night light, they saw the white feathers of the gull float by in the water draining down the culvert. Sometime later that same night they were woken by a sickening smell from the culvert, and an acrid steam seemed to rise from it and cause their eyes to stream and their throats to dry. When first light came, the water of the culvert had frothed and made foam up the banks but the smell had faded.

  They travelled on, the waste ground
narrowing so they were forced to go down the bank and walk alongside the filthy black water. The slimy rock of the bank rose high above them, and they seemed ever more enclosed. At one place they came upon the grease of rats, at another the rotting carcass of a blackbird, all maggoty.

  “I think I knew then that the real Wen had started. It seemed to draw us on, to suck us into its filth and death as it sucked the dying life all around us into its subterranean maws. Heath became a mole obsessed, and Haize was under his spell. They wanted to go on, and grew angry with me when I tried to dissuade them from continuing. I wanted to go back but now I dared not venture back alone, and nor did I wish to leave Haize in that place. While deep inside me I was curious – curious! – about what would come next....”

  Food became scarce, but they scratched a few worms from beneath rocky rubble and though they were alive yet they tasted putrid.

  Then they had nothing but the walls on either side of them, and the muckily flowing water joined a bigger flow and they knew they were once more beside that vile stream whose archway they had first stopped by, and that if any route would lead them directly to the heart of the Wen it would be this one.

  Reluctantly, Rowan agreed to go on.

  “I remember the dark chill of that tunnel closing in on us as we picked our way down on to its bed, over which the stream of water found its way. Parts were dry and we again smelt rat and felt very nervous. I do not know why we went on. We marked the wall at the tunnel entrance and from then on made our mark regularly, as high as we could, for it was clear from deposits on the wall that sometimes the water rose. The walls were soft and crumbly and took our scrivenings well.

  “Light came down from the surface above through distant holes up vertical tunnels in the ceiling. We moved from shadow to shadow and though the smell of the place was sickening at first we got used to it. We heard unidentifiable sounds and slidings all around. We went on quickly, the tunnel turning sometimes, but always sloping a little down and others coming into it. We continued to mark the course lest we could not find our way back again.