No, talking was no use. Bracken tried to tell Boswell about the stone in the heart of the Ancient System but the words died in his mouth and he could not take Boswell past the Chamber of Echoes in his account, lying—‘No, no. I couldn’t get through, it’s impossible’—and the lie was better than betraying the memory of the glimmering stone where he and Rebecca were… what? ‘Where we were was the best way he could tell it to himself. Bracken wanted to leave Nuneham.
So did Stonecrop, and Mullion as well; while Boswell left those things to Bracken, whose words were sometimes jumbled and confused but whose instincts he trusted and would always follow, as the Stone itself seemed to have instructed him to do. Medlar agreed. He had known before any of them that there was no more he could do—a mole must learn the rest himself. And anyway, he had more to learn himself, and a place he must go to.
‘You will find there is much more to learn,’ Medlar said finally at the end of the first week of June, ‘and that none of it is very far from your heart. Indeed, I will let you into a secret!’ Medlar said this jovially, for he was relieved that his task was done. June was a time to travel, and he wanted to leave Nuneham himself and head for Uffington, to where, he knew now, he had always been going.
‘You do not have to learn anything. You know it all already. Each one of you. It’s all here!’ And he thumped his old chest cheerfully, laughing gaily as if everything was really so simple that it was absurd worrying about it, which it was.
‘As for fighting, when you no longer need to fight at all, you will know when you have learned enough. This is not a mystery but a simple fact. A real fighter does not need to raise one single talon to quell an opponent—unless it be to teach him a lesson of the crudest sort!’ Medlar looked at Stonecrop when he said this, remembering their first meeting, and then laughed again.
‘We are living in a strange time, which is why I am going to Uffington. By the Stone’s grace I will get there. As for you, each of you has the strength to be a warrior, as have we all.’
They said their farewells at night by the Nuneham Stone. Medlar spoke to each of them in turn—including Mullion, of whom he had grown especially fond—and then said a prayer to the Stone itself. Boswell said a prayer as well and then uttered the journey blessing on Medlar. And when Medlar had gone, he said it again, so that its protection would go with old Medlar, who had awakened so much in all their hearts.
The June moon was waxing and strong. ‘We’ll travel all together,’ said Bracken with a strong spirit which they all respected, even Stonecrop. ‘We’ll head straight for the Duncton Stone. Just look at the moon! You know what it means for a Duncton mole? Midsummer’s coming! And there’s words I’ve promised to say by the Stone on Midsummer Night.’
‘We’ll have to push it to get there that quick,’ said Stonecrop.
‘We will!’ said Bracken. He stayed on alone by the Nuneham Stone for a moment after the others had set off, his snout pointing towards Duncton, whose pull he could feel and which would get stronger as the moon got fuller and the days advanced towards Midsummer. And looking at it, and then in the direction of Duncton Wood, he remembered another light, white, glimmering, and whispered ‘Rebecca, Rebecca,’ and laughed aloud into the night.
Few springs had ever been as miserable in spirit as that in which Rune consolidated his power in Duncton Wood. Under his black thrall the system became in fact what the Pasture moles had always feared it was—a place where evil spells are woven by minds that lurk in darkness and by moles whose smiles are as warm as the welcome an owl gives to its prey.
Rune’s power came initially from the vicious loyalty of the henchmoles whose favour he had fostered so successfully under Mandrake, and who now did his bidding whenever it came, and for whatever purpose.
He was well aware that since the henchmoles had given him power, they could, in theory at least, take it away again. For this reason, once he was installed as leader of the Duncton system, he began a policy of winning their gratitude by granting them favours of territory and matings and securing their fear by imposing particularly cruel and rough punishment on those henchmoles who transgressed his deliberately arbitrary rules. He had noticed how Mandrake had made everymole fear him by occasionally picking on one at random and killing or maiming him for all to see.
