Free Duncton Found by William Horwood Page A

nodded.
    “Then help them touch the Stone. Help them for me.”
    “I am afraid.”
    “They are as well. Help them now, it is for me.”
    Then the old mole limped towards the Stone, whose light was great and whose sound was Silence more than ever mole had heard. As Beechen tried to follow him, the light was gone, and Beechen found himself before the Duncton Stone.
    The June sun was there as the sounds of the great wood fell away below and Beechen strove to reach up a paw and touch the Stone.
    But how hard that is, how frightening, and the only consolation he felt was that across moledom were a few striving moles whose names he had known but which he now forgot, and all were there for him.
    “Help me!” he cried out again and the few who were waiting heard it well.
    Caradoc, guardian of Caer Caradoc.
    Mistle, before Violet’s Stone in Avebury.
    Giyder at the Siabod Stones.
    Then, at Fyfield, Wort: alone, afraid, judgemental, reaching up towards the Stone against which she tested herself and felt fear.
    “Help me,” she whispered, an unknowing echo of the Stone Mole’s plea.
    Then Rampion, of Rollright born and bred, true mole: she strove to touch the frightening Stone.
    All striving, all reaching out their paws, six at the seven Ancient Systems, one more needed to make the seven up.
    “Help us now!” cried Beechen, his body beginning to tremble with the strain. The air was heavy about, the sky trembling with darkness coming.

    But that prayer was not heard or felt where once it might have been. Not at Uffington, the first of the seven Ancient Systems but last this special day to find a mole to help. None there. Only a place now of memory, where prayers were lost among the ruined tunnels and ended with the white bones of long-dead moles. Not there. A new Seventh was now needed, and with it the change that moledom had so long sought. As the stars shift in the sky so now occurred reorientation across the Stones of moledom. New strength for old. Tradition dies and is reborn. Only so can such prayers be answered.
    “Help us!” cried out the helpless Beechen one more time and, turning its back on sterile Uffington, his prayer fled north to Beechenhill and a darkening sky and the approach of sweeping rain. But still where its Stone rose there was light. Brighter than everywhere else about, but threatened, and a mole desperate to reach it now, and desperate with tiredness.
    “Too late! I am too late!” cried Wharfe, striving to run forward still as other moles followed far behind.
    So he ran to reach the shining Stone before cloud and rain obscured it from the sun and a moment that would never be regained was lost for ever. From where does a brave mole’s strength come? Faith? Stubbornness? An ordination of the stars? No, mole, it comes from the Silence where he was made, the Silence that most lose. From there it comes, and it is allmole’s heritage.
    As Wharfe felt the first spits of rain across his face he found his final strength. The ground levelled off and the Stone was there and he too tired to feel afraid. Even as the first full drop of rain plunged from the sky he reached up his paw and placed it on the Stone, and the wet fell glistening on his flesh and fur.
    “I offer my life and all my striving to the Stone,” he cried, “and my help to all who need it!”
    “And I!” cried out Caradoc, far away in the Welsh Marches where he had waited alone with such faith for so long. “I offer my help!”
    Then too did Mistle touch at Avebury, and Glyder for the Siabod moles. Then Rampion of Rollright born. And in Fyfield the wise Stone accepted Wort’s touch too, though she was of the Word and her intentions were most evil. Yet six moles touching, and using their strength to help him touch as well.
    For then it was that Beechen reached up, and touched the Duncton Stone, and spoke the words that mark the acceptance of his great ministry to mole: “Stone, who made me, help me serve their need and know thy truth that