Duncton Quest by William Horwood

then when I brought the second Stillstone, and it’s no good looking so disapproving, Tryfan, because the Stillstones aren’t exactly fun to carry even if they are small and I doubt very much if you would have done better even if you are stronger than me because there’s something about them that weighs down a mole. So anyway... I got the second one and took it to the same stonepit except that I wasn’t sure by then if that had been the one I threw the first one in... and by the third I was utterly confused, and by the fourth, which was no joke at all being the Stillstone of Darkness, all I wanted to do was get rid of the thing and I can’t remember much at all about the last ones...” He tailed off.
    “Well, it sounds a bit pathetic to me. You’re sure you don’t know exactly where they are?” said Tryfan suspiciously. But Spindle gave him such a look of hurt honesty that Tryfan apologised and then fell silent.
    “All I do know,” said Spindle finally, “is that each of the Stillstones went in a pit near one of the six Stones, which has an obvious kind of logic, I suppose. It’s the sort of thing the Stone would make a mole do!” He laughed, a little ruefully.
    “Well!” said Tryfan, exasperated. “Well!” And turning to Boswell he looked at him for some kind of support, or comment, but Boswell gave none, but instead scratched himself, hummed an annoyingly cheerful tune quite out of keeping with the sombreness of the occasion, and then found some food and ate it.
    “Sleep seems to be in order,” he said. And, settling his snout along his wrinkled paws, he closed his eyes and started to snore.
    And Tryfan and Spindle eventually settled themselves in companionable proximity, and lay staring at the fall of night, listening to the eternal north wind, their minds racing with all they had been talking about.

    “By the way, Spindle,” said Boswell, who woke bright and early the following day, “do you happen to know if Brevis named the leader of the grikes in that report of his?”
    “Yes he did. But anyway he told me,” said Spindle. “I know the name of the leader whom the others obey to the death and believe to be the mole Scirpus prophesied would come back to lead the Word to final victory over the Stone.” A look of fear and dread crossed Spindle’s face.
    “Well, what’s he called?” asked Tryfan.
    “Oh, it’s not a male. The grike leader is a female,” said Spindle. “And I saw her, too, just once. She was... she....”
    “Well?” said Boswell.
    “Dark. Strong looking. Her eyes... were... fierce. I saw her, just for a moment. I shouldn’t have done, I know that. She was darkly – um – “He looked down at his paws with embarrassment.
    “Yes?” prompted Tryfan.
    “Beautiful,” said Spindle. “I mean she... she did not look evil. And yet there is something about her to make a mole afraid. Oh yes, terribly afraid. But she was –”
    “‘Beautiful’,” mimicked Tryfan. “Sounds to me you find all females beautiful. Probably haven’t seen enough of them.”
    “And her name?” said Boswell cutting across Tryfan’s remark.
    Even as Spindle said it, Tryfan had the strange and frightening feeling that Boswell already knew it, and had known it all – all of this terror and destruction – and there was in his eyes, and about his whole stance, a sense of expectation, as if time had turned to a point he, Boswell, White Mole, had long waited for.
    “Her name,” whispered Spindle, as if merely uttering it would bring the walls of the chamber crashing down upon them. “Her name is Henbane.”
    The very name seemed to call forth a hush of dread in the chamber they were in. With some difficulty Tryfan turned to Boswell and said, “You look as if that was a name you expected to hear? Do you know of this Henbane?” He tried to sound calm and yet was filled with a nameless dread that turned his stomach and seemed to leave a dark singing in his ears.
    Boswell stared at each of