The enormous significance of this text was immediately obvious to both the Holy Mole and to Skeat. For it confirmed a belief, held by generation upon generation of scribemoles, that there were, indeed, seven holy Books and not six—the number Uffington actually had. And if there were seven Books, there must be a seventh Stillstone, for each of the six Books in Uffington had its counterpart in a Stillstone, as the special stones associated with the seven Books were known, whose location in the deepest parts of Uffington was a secret known only to the Holy Mole and the masters. What the two moles immediately debated was whether this text answered the two great mysteries about the lost Book: where it was, and what its subject was. And also whether or not there was a seventh Stillstone. But, as scholars so often do, they failed to come to any clear answer.
When the system heard that this text had been found and what its contents were, there was an enormous excitement, for surely its discovery was some kind of sign. Inevitably a great many scribes, particularly the younger, more aggressive ones who liked a bit of action, asked to be allowed to leave Uffington to search for the lost Stillstone and the lost Book.
But Boswell, who felt the same urge himself, was excluded from this clamouring, for how could a defenceless mole such as he ever leave Uffington? He lost himself in work in the libraries, pursuing the one course of search for the seventh Book open to him. He began a massive, solitary search for other material in the library in the same script as that of the manuscript he had found. He himself has recorded this search elsewhere, but what is important here is that in the Midsummer after the spring in which he made the initial discovery, he found a reference in an entry which was written in the same script, in one of the Rolls of the Systems, the books that record the findings of the wandering scribes, as they were then known, about the systems they had visited. It referred to ‘Duncton, a system separated from the world by the rivers that surround three sides of it, which has tunnels of great subtlety and wisdom’.
In itself this entry was not unusual. What was remarkable was the effect it had on him. It seemed to him as he read it that he heard a calling to him from it, as if from an old mole lost in a place from which he could not escape, asking him to come.
He himself doubted this voice, believing it to be but his vanity and pride making an excuse for him to follow the urgings he felt to leave the system. But, over the weeks that followed, it persisted and eventually he too asked permission of the Holy Mole to see if he could find the system, whose location was known, though no scribe had visited it—or at least returned from it—for many generations.
He asked three times, and each time his request was refused. So finally, that September, the same in which Bracken and Rebecca first met, he trekked down to the Blowing Stone and began his vigil for truth by it. And so it was there, in the light brought to him by the storm and by the grace of the Stone that he made his decision, even though it meant breaking his vows. It is said that he begged the forgiveness of the Holy Mole himself and that it was given to him ‘for all the things you have done for Uffington and for all the things the Stone may allow you to do outside’.
It is also said, though there is no record of this, that Skeat accompanied his protégé and friend to the end of the eastern part of Uffington Hill, where, sadly, he must have watched Boswell slowly make the start of his journey.
There, too, we must leave him to make his perilous journey alone. It will be a long time before we hear of him again, for Duncton was distant and those days were dark and dangerous.
Yet as he starts upon it, let us repeat, as Skeat did then, the ancient journey blessing, which is traditionally said as a plea to the Stone when a beloved one is going at last from our protection:
May the peace of your power
Encompass him, going and returning;
May the peace of the White Mole be his in the travel.
And may he return home safeguarded.
Cairn’s vengeful chase after Rune eventually gave way to common sense. The deeper he got into the wood the more its great trees oppressed him, for he was only used to open sky, fresh wind, and tunnels that were sparse and smelt dry.
But he was at first reluctant to turn back. For one thing, his brother Stonecrop had told him once, ‘Never leave a fight half fought,’ which Cairn took to mean that an opponent was best killed rather than left free to sneak off and remain a danger.
