Duncton Wood [v1.2] by William Horwood

Author:William Horwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction
Published: 1980-05-13T04:00:00+00:00

The stait of mole dois change and vary

Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary

Now dansand mery, now like to dee

Our plesance heir is all vaneglory;

This fals world is bot transitory

The flesh is brukle the dark is sle

We that in heill wes, and gladnes

Are trublit now with gret seiknes

And feblit with infermite...

As he chanted these ancient words, few of which Bracken could understand, it was as if the wall echoed back the actual chant of ancient moles, powerful moles, and dark sound began to come at Bracken, louder and louder, so that he wanted to run from it. But whichever way he turned, however he tried to escape, it came louder at him, surrounding him in its catastrophe, running at him from every tunnel in the Ancient System, a storm of sound.

As he began to cry out for the terror of it, he thought only of himself and could not know that its echoes and reverberations traveled far beyond the chamber they were in, down the tunnels, booming and vibrating up to the surface, encircling and then issuing from the Stone itself, and then out over the slopes, down toward Barrow Vale, a sound of disaster.

Mekkins heard it, stopping in midsentence down in the Marsh End, shaking his head in puzzlement, then running to the surface and snouting up toward the distant Stone from where the deep chant of ancient moles seemed to be coming.

Comfrey heard it, in the shade of the wood’s edge where he vainly sought herbs long since killed by the drought, and he turned toward the hill, the name Rebecca forming helplessly in his mouth as fear filled him and he sought the comfort her name always gave him.

Rebecca heard it, down in her burrows, and she knew that what it was they had been waiting for for so long, for generations, perhaps before any of them had been born, had come.

Stonecrop heard it and mole after mole, like him, stopped what they were doing and paused fearfully, as the sound from the Stone came down to them like thunder through the trees.

“Stop!” cried Bracken to Boswell. “Stop the sound!” he shouted, turning this way and that in his desperation. And Boswell’s voice began to soften and change back, his words still thundering but no longer echoing with dark sound, as Bracken heard him say “You argue with Stone-crop, you argue with Rebecca, you argue with yourself. All of you argue, but now the time is coming when you must listen to the Stone. Now the last shadow is falling.”

Bracken stared at Boswell and saw that he too was shaking, sweating and afraid himself. He seemed possessed by some power that only reluctantly let him go and Bracken called again to him, no longer in fear, but in pity and compassion for them all.

The last shadow had fallen. The last shadow? It was with this mysterious knowledge hanging over them, and not knowing what it meant, that Bracken finally led Boswell – both of them very subdued – through the seventh entrance and on to the central core.

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