Duncton Found by William Horwood Read Free Book Online Page B

felt most at home. That would be a day!
    While Holm, in those moments he asked for the Stone’s blessings, always found time to request that his Lorren might be reunited with her long-lost and much missed siblings, Starling and Bailey. Now, that would be a day!

    Holm had been right. Rampion was on the surface in the enclave made by the Stoats, not meditating or praying but nervously snouting up at the bright sun, and at the shadows it seemed to cast all about.
    “You!” she exclaimed, with surprise and relief in her eyes.
    He nodded, but said nothing. His presence was sufficient words for her, and in the way they had there was need of no words more to explain why she was there, and why he had come.
    Then he was off, and she following, leaving the familiar routes back to safety behind them as they moved forward across the field that lay between the Stoats and the prohibited Stones. Sunlight lit their way, the same that reached everywhere across moledom that day.
    He took her by a surface route to near the Rollright circle, then underground to what she guessed was the buried base of the Stone that rises at the centre of Rollright’s circle. Light filtered down through cracks in the sheep-worn soil above, and Rampion was surprised to see that the chamber’s floor showed signs of use. A mole had been this way before, and recently.
    “Me,” said Holm, answering the query in her eyes.
    “You!” said Rampion in surprise. “But you never told us. I thought Lorren was the active follower.”
    Holm’s eyes were wide, staring at the wall of stone and then at the cracked roof above.
    “We have different ways, but the same purpose. Best way in a pair. Only way.”
    “Can we burrow to the surface and touch the Stone? We could escape back down this way....”
    “Nearly. Not yet. Too soon.”
    But he took her right up to the wall of Stone, though guarding against either of them touching it, and then, wrinkling his diminutive snout, he gazed at the roof more closely. The light came not just from the cracks there, but shimmered as well in the root tendrils that came down from surface plants, tiny shoots of grass, and the white-green of plantain roots. The roof looked frail and thin, and there was the sense of great light above it, waiting to be let in. Holm touched the trembling soil and it gave a little, letting more light in.
    “Won’t have to wait long. When we thrust out we’ll touch the Stone. Grikes will see. Will chase. But we must do it, Rampion. It will be time to show the Stone Mole that this system knows he lives. All the Seven must try to do it. Holm feels it. Holm was taught by great Mayweed more than just routes.”
    “I’m scared,” said Rampion, for suddenly her world seemed vulnerable, waiting for something that would change everything she knew.
    “He’s scared too,” said Holm quietly. “Needs us now, needs all of us.”
    Then he was silent once more, and in the half darkness of the chamber father and daughter waited for the moment when they must take their courage in their paws and break out into the light and touch the Stone.

    We have but one record of the followers dying near or at the site of one of the ancient Seven that morning, and it is a most strange one and portentous.
    For at Fyfield an incident occurred which was not scribed by moles of the Stone, but scrivened that same day by an eldrene, and one very different from the easy-going eldrene of Rollright.
    Her name was Wort, eldrene of Fyfield, and all we need say of her now is this: had she not lived then many a follower and more would not have died. What Rollright gave way in indulgence and indiscipline Wort made up a hundred times in cruelty and persecution of those of the Stone.
    Thus it was, in pursuance of vile followers (as it seemed to her), that on that June day she found herself with a cohort of guardmoles watching over the Fyfield Stone, and there apprehended three moles who, following that same urge or call we have noted already,