Read Online Duncton Found by William Horwood - Free Book Online Page B

touch it, and speak out the Word and pervert its power to our use.”
    “Perversion” was a word that Lucerne liked to use. He used it well.
    Behind him distant thunder rolled. A great white flash lightened the sky. Wind came, and sudden violent rain. For a moment Lucerne seemed afraid.
    With a smile, Henbane offered her teat once more and Lucerne seemed almost to go to it. Then lightning came again as he hesitated, and its light flared across her body and at her wet teats and he seemed to see her as if in horror and disgust.
    “Come suckle me, my love,” she said.
    The lightning was violent about them and the thunder huge, and suddenly, impulsively, with hatred in his face, he turned on her and struck her.
    “No more,” he said. And with a cry that combined loss with discovery of something new he turned back to relish the scene as rain poured down and his fur shone bright with wet. Appalled, hurt, stricken more in heart and mind than body, Henbane retreated to shelter from the rain, and Lucerne’s wrath.
    He did not look at her again, but cried out: “I shall kill the Stone!” And he arced his talons sharp across the sky. Then from high above him, as if at his command, cracking thunder came once more.
    Lucerne laughed with pleasure at the dreadful scene and raised his paw as if to touch a Stone which none but he could see. The sky murked with driven rain and the cloud was untidy and lowering over Whern’s greatest height, and the storm passed on across moledom to the south and Henbane was gone, and Lucerne triumphant and alone.
     

Chapter Five
    As Beechen and Tryfan continued their trek towards the Duncton Stone that bright day, the way ahead remained rough and needed clearing, and Beechen said more than once, “Is it near? Are we nearly there?”
    His voice was the more nervous because Feverfew seemed to have dropped behind now, and he knew it was not because she could not keep up with them but because this trek represented his passing from her main care to Tryfan’s.
    Then Tryfan disappeared as well, in among some heavy undergrowth, branches and twigs cracking as he went to find the way ahead.
    Tryfan looked back and could not see Beechen, though he could hear him, so he called out to him to stay where he was while a way was found... He was annoyed with himself, for nomole knew Duncton better than he and yet that day he felt disorientated and could not seem to keep in touch with his own paws. Each way he looked was beguiling, and the air now was warm on the wood’s floor, its scents deep and rich, the soil wormful. Strange! The soils here should be drier and the tall beech trees that surround the Stone clearing must be near. But the ground seemed different and undulating wrong... downslope here and the wood filled suddenly with the strangest wraiths of light as if there were unseen moles about. Tryfan crouched down in awe.
    While Beechen, seeing Tryfan go ahead and then disappearing beyond some bramble stems, ran quickly after him to find him once again. Except that when he reached where Tryfan had seemed to go he was not there. Only sunshine, and the whispering breeze high above, and then, as he turned, it seemed the brambles turned as well and suddenly frightened he ran back the way he had come, except when he got there it was not. He was alone and lost.
    Lost? No, no... Mayweed’s lesson came back to him. He was here   –, his paws, his snout, his breathing, he himself. Here. Mayweed... and bringing back to himself an image of the strange mole, Beechen felt comfort and calmness. He was not lost. He was free. And the Stone was near. He need only... what? Mayweed told him to feel his way forward, or back, or whatever way felt best. Make where he was familiar and using that go on, never ever panicking....
    So Beechen, very nervous it is true, but still himself, still not panicked, went on. All was leaves, dried twigs and poky branches, and the sticky fronds of cleaver caught at his flanks like soft alien