Read Online Duncton Quest by William Horwood - Free Book Online

precedents, however, for travelling females accompanied by a male were allowed to stay in the visitors’ burrows, and even, if the Holy Mole was willing, permitted to view some of the communal burrows and meeting places.
    Sleekit was the kind of female whose elegance of fur and carriage, and annoying calmness of voice, was such that other females are intimidated by her while males, impressed by an outward show, tended to be struck speechless or fawning in her presence. Other wiser moles might have seen beyond her elegance to the strange mix of coldness and vulnerability it sought to hide. She was sharp of tongue, and clever, and moles watched what they said in her presence. Her real role – one of the select sideem of the grikes, watchers and schemers and spies – could not possibly have been guessed at the time she arrived in Uffington. But the scribemoles, with the exception of a few of the more worldly ones, were so impressed by her good looks and her seeming interest in what they did that they almost fell over themselves to inform her of their ways and the work they did; and well, very well, did she mask her true intent, which was to complement the information that Weed was gathering about what texts they had, where they were kept, and what the scribemoles’ routine was.
    Yet where Sleekit went, discord among males always followed, especially among celibate males such as scribemoles. The older they were the worse it became, for there was something about the way Sleekit came close to them, looking so vulnerable and innocent, that stirred in them feelings and produced actions which they themselves, jostling in a rivalrous kind of way for her attention, might have called fraternal, or avuncular, or possibly paternal, but which, in truth, went beyond the acceptable bounds of all three.
    Insidiously, like the spread of rotten root disease beneath a raft of mat-grass, the divisions and ructions in Uffington that preceded Brevis’ departure, seemed to deepen with the arrival of Weed and Sleekit.
    Not that any mole then saw that they caused it – indeed, none would have guessed it. For were not the newcomers most ardent in their worship of the Stone, and most respectful (especially that young and most caringly intelligent female), and willing to learn?
    Were they not also charitable and balanced in their views on the invasive grikes, suggesting that, after all, the stories had been exaggerated and the grikes were a lot better than they seemed? The rumours were unkind and unfair. The grikes were hospitable and learned and lived by a code which, if other moles abided by it, was just and probably sensible for the rougher and more dangerous systems they came from. What was more, they seemed to have evolved a way of dealing with the plague based on strict observance of worship and cleanliness... All of which was just what the scribemoles wished to hear, assuaging as it did their doubts about what was going on in moledom, and giving support to the prevailing view that the grikes were not a real threat at all and scribemoles were best advised to do nothing. So, unknowingly, the scribemoles allowed two leading grikes into their midst, a spying sojourn broken only when suddenly, unexpectedly and dramatically, Brevis returned.
    It was in the middle of September, and he came up the slopes from the north, tired, badly cut about with talon-thrusts, and looking as if he had aged a cycle of seasons. Yet he insisted on an immediate audience with the Holy Mole himself. In the course of it he not only gave the most dire warnings of the grikes, and much evidence of their ruthless cruelty, but learned, to his horror, of the fact that two strange moles had been admitted into the Holy Burrows... moles whom he was able immediately to identify from hearsay as Weed and Sideem Sleekit.
    But too late: Weed and Sleekit had gone, leaving grim evidence of the urgency of their departure. A cleric, Fawn, and a scribemole, Weld, were found dead on the