Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  In some burrows it seemed that Dunbar had worked on scribings for a particular age range, as if trying to find the perfect expression in sound which he might then have intended to incorporate with other such developed sounds into a completed chamber.

  So they continued as night fell and the tunnels became lit by the lights of the Wen reflecting in the sky above, and the chambers and tunnels echoed with its rumbly nightsounds.

  It became clear that their early guess that Dunbar had been experimenting with sound-scribings was correct, and that he seemed obsessed with the passage of age to youth. But why? They could not tell.

  There had come over them all a kind of urgent fascination, as if they had to find the answer to that question, or at least find something, before they left. So they searched on into the night without rest, sounding walls continuously until by the gentlest touch they could tell it was “just” another wall of try-outs. While Tryfan and Spindle were sounding and listening, Mayweed was searching and, gradually, leading them to tunnels where the sounds were becoming clearer, as if the voices of the moles enscribed were becoming more individual. Which they were, for gradually at least one voice emerged, which was clearest of all in the more aged versions though uncertain in the younger. Dunbar’s voice perhaps? A mole in search of what he was before?

  At the same time, as they travelled on, they found evidence that Dunbar, if it had been he, had aged as he made these great lost works. The scribings were no longer as high up the walls as they had been, and the talons were rougher, and the scribings less deep. The style changed as well, becoming freer and without the detail of the earlier chambers. Yet the sounds improved, as if Dunbar was beginning to find the very essence of what he wanted.

  Still they were only voices sounding: not song, not spoken words. Nor was there any Dark Sound, as Tryfan understood it, which is to say sounds that wither a mole’s heart. The sounds they found were all good, all searching, all light.

  “Perhaps he was searching for the sound of Silence,” Spindle surmised, “though I wouldn’t have thought that was a sound moles made!”

  “Or perhaps these scribings are part of his prophecies, that the Stone Mole is coming and so on,” said Tryfan thoughtfully.

  Then, quite suddenly, things changed. They came to a chamber of pup sounds, and mingling with it was a female voice. Soft sometimes, then harsh, even in the same scribing as if Dunbar did not quite have control over his own talons for these sounds. Weepings came then, and screams, and the sounds of comforting. And through it all the mews of pups, soft now, calling now, then softly beautiful.

  Then a strange phenomena. As they moved on the scribings became increasingly subtle, and perhaps the chambers more perfectly shaped to their purpose, so that they no longer needed to touch the scribings before they started whispering their sound, as if picking up the pawsteps of the three awestruck moles, and transmuting them to the sounds Dunbar had ordained.

  It was soon after this that they heard their first Dark Sound. Heavy, threatening, and travelling their way like filthy water surging down a tunnel. They held each other in fear as it passed.

  Tryfan took the lead now, telling the others to stay very close. They could see that ahead of them was a portal, over it dark carvings, beyond it a chamber. They went towards the portal, the Dark Sound mounting mightily around them as their pawsteps travelled ahead and then were echoed back at them, but malformed and vile, seeming to seek them to turn on each other, to hate, to fear, to punish, to... and then Tryfan charged forward, pulling Mayweed after him and Spindle too and they fell through the dire portal of Dunbar and into that chamber he had made the portal guard.

  Silence, nearly. Not much scribing. Light dull in a high shaft, the light mellowing from lurid to nearly dawn.

  “Tryfan Sir...” began Mayweed, seeing it was later than they realised.

  “Sshh....”

  But that brief exchange was enough to sound the scribings around them, and make that burrow seem as if it was at one end of a tunnel, at the other end of which was a mother and a pup calling, mewing, comforting, soft; the sounds just after birth; and then that faded as a dream might fade on waking. At the far side of the chamber was another portal, blocked, most strangely blocked with flint. Black and shining. The soil around it was impacted and hard and it did not crumble to a talon touch.

  Tryfan touched the flint and from beyond came a hollow sound, so he touched it again, and they all heard it, or thought they did: a fleeting sound, very distant, making a mole think he could almost hear it but not quite. Like the running of pawsteps down a far distant tunnel that a mole fancies he hears but never hears again, and wonders after if he heard at all.

  It was alluring, and again Tryfan touched that flint, and again could not quite catch the sound. No, sounds. Calling, running, calling... and then, returning to the chamber they were in, were echoes, very faint, of that first mother sound they heard. Then a solitary roaring owl, distant as well, circling above their heads in echo form, where the light of dawn was beginning to brighten.

  “We must go!” said Tryfan.

  Even as he said it he turned as if barely thinking of what he did and sounded the scribing on the wall. Down its sinewy length his talon ran and, even as it did, with gathering force that last work of Dunbar outside the flint-blocked chamber sounded clear. A scream, terrible and long, the scream of birth; yes, and the scream thereafter of a female battling for her young, fighting for it, desperate to preserve its life. A scream redoubled and eightfolded all about them and the cry of a pup, mewing and desperate like its mother.

  Then the strangest distillation of much that they had already heard: pups to youngsters, to young adult and that mother’s scream with other females too. Then that old male voice, so old and tired, calling, seeking, crying out and travelling through time to youth again, and puphood, and before even that to the briefest and most lovely moment that they heard; so brief that they barely knew they heard it: the sound of Silence.

  Then roaring owl again, echoing around above their heads, so far off, and that Silence gone.

  With its passing the screams returned and to the three moles it seemed they were filled with terror: pup cries, birthing, life and death sounds; and such sad loss.

  “Feverfew!” cried Tryfan.

  Then with that cry which joined the screams that shook the chamber all about, he turned for the entrance, seeming to enter a hundred tunnels, all scattering, seeming not to know, and seeming, as the others followed him, to hear all the sounds they had heard before but no longer distilled and simple. Dark Sound: of old moles and of young, of good and of bad, of females and of males, of darkness and of light, so that the tunnels were a confusion, and their passage a chase into its depths and all the long time that each step seemed to take they heard still that birth scream and desperate mews, and cruelties just beginning.

  Nomole but those three can ever know the agonies they felt, or the panic that came over them.

  Never lost, Mayweed?

  He was lost; and each of them as well, lost in sounds that mounted more and more, as if the whole of moledom was sounding about them, in all its light and all its darkness as they ran.

  “Silence!”

  Tryfan had stopped, and pulled both the others short, his great talons on their shoulders, his strength their strength.

  “Be still,” he whispered, caressing their shoulders, looking at each with gentleness, “be still now. The way out is not this way.”

  Then as dawn light filled the tunnels, and grey shadows replaced the lurid lights’ seeming brightness, the sounds stilled about them and the tunnel or chamber they were in seemed to stretch before and above and behind them, hugely, as if whichever way they looked they were receding into smallness.

  “Silence!” said Tryfan, but it was not a command, it was a description of something nearly there.

  Then that first voice they had heard, the aged mole, sounded again nearby, muffled as it had seemed but clearing as the silence grew, until th
ey knew it was speaking, saying a word, a name, their names. And afterwards each said it was their name they heard that mole speak.

  And each knew what mole it was.

  For Spindle, it was Brevis once again, calling him to safety. And he wept.

  For Mayweed it was the mole who had nurtured him when he was a pup sealed up in a burrow, whispering him out of the burrow once again, speaking him down tunnels of darkness towards the distant light of Slopeside. Humble Mayweed wept.

  But for Tryfan it was Boswell, old beloved Boswell, calling him forward now, Boswell in the shadows just ahead, asking him to come now for it had been long, so long, and Tryfan was ready to come now.

  “Come to me now, come...” said old Boswell, his face so lined and wan in those grey dawning shadows which lay beyond the edge of Silence where they were.

  “You’re in Whern now, you’re there now,” whispered Tryfan.

  “Yes,” called Boswell, “and you’re ready to come here too. You’re strong enough. So follow me out of where you are now, lead the others with you, follow me...” and those shadows moved, that great chamber lessened about them, and, still touching his friends, Tryfan urged first one and then the other on beyond their tears, out of that nearly-Silence they had found, away from those dying cries with, “Come now, Boswell will show us, come....”

  Later, dazed and tired, the three moles emerged out of Dunbar’s tunnels at the point where they had started, and the sky over the Wen streaked with the birth blood of the sun. And Tryfan knew his young had been born and that he was late, almost too late, to reach Feverfew and aid her... and he knew the Stone had so ordained it.

  Yet then he ran, fast and urgent, across the real world of the surface now, the dawn-red sky breaking behind him as he ran on; down then, down and along, back the way he had come, fast and faster from eastside to westside.

  “Tryfaaan...” he left Spindle and Mayweed far behind.

  “Tryfaaan...” he passed by Heath without a word and ran on towards the darkness that he knew he would find.

  Tunnel walls rushing towards him, darkness ahead, and:

  “Tryfan!” screamed at him, and she was there. His Feverfew.

  On the tunnel floor before her a single bloody male pup, mewing. Upon her fur, about her mouth, smeared brown and red across her flanks, was blood. And she stricken with weakness yet driven by instinct; she maddened with fear, yet fighting to the end.

  “Tryfan!” she screamed, picking up her last surviving pup, taking him mewing in her mouth and running past Tryfan towards where Mayweed, Spindle and Heath came, and leaving him, to face alone, the crazed moles that chased her.

  No words exist that can describe that scene, the final scene perhaps in a system’s ancient history. Old moles, moles of a dying kind, aged and lost, embittered and frail, their mouths and talons bearing the only living thing about them: the blood of the pups that Feverfew had borne, pups they had destroyed. And at their head, hateful, filled with the venom of a sterile bitterness, Squail. She the mole deputed to watch over, she the mole who decreed that pups from diseased flanks are better dead, every last one of them.

  No words can describe the sounds that mob made, the sounds of a decrepit superstitious rage.

  No words for cruelty brought alive.

  Tryfan did not kill them, he had no need to. Perhaps such moles are already dead. Though he advanced on them but slowly, yet they broke before him as dead trees might break before November winds. Broke, splintered and cracked, a mob becoming individuals too pathetic to sully the talons of a good mole. Then they slunk, looked back, sought vainly to groom the blood from their guilty mouths and talons, and were gone, back into the tunnels where they would soon die.

  Feverfew survived that murderous assault. Tryfan survived. Their pup survived, for a time. And the system pretended none of it had been, but for whispers in the night.

  Sunshine came, but Tryfan saw it not. His eyes were bleak, his spirit low.

  Starling pupped, four healthy ones, and Heath was watching over them nearby. Good news those pups, laughter in the tunnels of the Wen, laughter that hid shadows they all knew.

  It had happened. It had.

  For a time their pup survived. And poor Feverfew fed it as best she could from scalpskinned teats, accepting no comfort until the day came that pup was gone. Always weak, then weaker, finally dead. After that it seemed too late, for where it had been was a great silence, unknown, sterile, on one side Tryfan and on the other Feverfew, and no words between.

  Why?

  “Why me?”

  But what could Spindle say, or Mayweed, in those beautiful days of May? Nothing but wait; nothing finally but leave.

  “Not me!” said Starling, “I’ve got young. And anyway, this place isn’t so bad, really. Also, surprise, surprise, I think Feverfew will need me.” Starling smiled, a caring adult now.

  “But she’ll come....”

  Starling shook her head.

  “She’s not ready, but you probably don’t understand. She’s not yet said goodbye.”

  “But magical Madam....”

  Starling touched Mayweed tenderly.

  “I’ll not stay here forever, silly. Just while my pups mature. Just to see them safe. Just to teach them everything I can. And then, I’ll make my way back home to Duncton Wood. Really! And I’ll bring Feverfew with me. Honestly! There’s Lorren to find and Bailey... Really!”

  She was right, Feverfew would not go. And Tryfan felt guilty that he felt relieved.

  “The scalpskin, Starling....”

  “Mayweed survived it, and all he’s got are a few scars.”

  “Yes,” whispered Tryfan, “yes that’s all.”

  Then Tryfan went to Feverfew and tried to speak, but no words came. Then she came close and snouted him gently and they dared look at each other; still no words came. Between them there was silence where their young had been, and it seemed their young was all the pain of moledom, all its hopes, and their death was all the cruelty and all the fear. Just empty silence there.

  “What can we make there now?” asked Tryfan at last.

  “Lat the Stane putte quat it wyl,” she said. “Der Tryfan, mowle, wyl we togeder be agayne?” There was longing in her sweet voice yet Tryfan did not know why they were parting, nor have words to stop it happening.

  “If we are faithful and true I think the Stone will bring us together once more,” he said.

  “Myn der, yow are moche biloved. I desyred puppes with yow.”

  “You are the only mole I loved or ever can,” said Tryfan.

  But Feverfew touched her talon to his mouth as if it might be better to say nothing than to tell what one day might be a lie. His eyes travelled over her flanks, ravaged now by scalpskin, and he touched her there.

  She smiled at him, “Have nat fer, I shalle nat dye. The Stane may heille me welle. Have nat fer myn luv, have not so.”

  Yet between them was a silence they could not cross for all the words they spoke, of love, of hope of better times. And they parted as if it was a relief, each to seek what it might be that would fill that silence and make them one again.

  Soon after Tryfan left the Wen, with Spindle at his side and good Mayweed making a third, to guide them northwards to the place from which old Boswell had called, north past the Dark Peak, north to dread Whern.

  Heath said a quiet goodbye, touching Tryfan and Spindle as they went and pausing a final moment with Mayweed, whom he liked.

  “One thing importunate me, Mayweed, would like to ask,” said Mayweed.

  “Go on, mate, I’ll do it if I can.”

  “Watch over the magical Madam with love, and when she says she wants to go home, you help her.”

  “Heath won’t forget that. Now off you go else Heath’ll start to cry, and that’s not Heath’s way,” said Heath.

  So Mayweed did, to guide Tryfan and Spindle northward from the Wen.

  While down on the eastside of that dying system Starling played with her young, with Feverfew n
earby. The other moles stayed clear, scared of Feverfew’s scalpskin now.

  Yet often Starling’s pups played at Feverfew’s flanks and Starling let them. She had been protected too long by a mole called Mayweed, who had the scars of scalpskin, to fear it for her young. And, too, as Feverfew sang to them, she saw a healing there, and knew from some ancient wisdom mothers know, what is right and what is wrong.

  It was right that her young learnt what Feverfew would teach them. It was right that Tryfan had gone for now.

  Yet it was wrong that Feverfew and Tryfan were separate, quite wrong. But Starling kept her silence on that at least, and knew that one day she might, with the Stone’s help, right those wrongs she saw.

  “Feverfew?”

  “Myne der?”

  “Will you tell my pups about the Stone when the time’s right, and me as well?” Feverfew nodded gently, thinking then of a great silence that was between herself and Tryfan, and she smiled; for there must be a way to fill it, and the Stone would find it, and Tryfan would know that too, he would!

  “Will you?” repeated Starling.

  “I wyl.”

  “Can I listen too, or is it just for pups?”

  “Yow can, my luv; yow can.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Dissent breeds its own community, which in turn makes its own burrows and finds its own meeting places. So it was now all across moledom among such followers of the Stone as remained willing to give voice to their faith.

  In some places, as in Caradoc, long abandoned Stones had become the meeting points, finding new life and ritual in the secret meetings those few brave followers held. But in Stone systems taken over and occupied by the grikes, such Stones became dangerous places to be, for they were often patrolled, and moles found there were under threat of snouting.

  So followers in such systems had to choose places which were less obvious, yet which could be found by moles who perhaps had only heard of them by word of mouth, whispered quickly by one believer to another at some hurried meeting where the Stone’s wonder was remembered, and its purpose praised. Often such places had to be abandoned, or went for long periods without a visit until suspicion had passed by and they could be used again.