Strange thoughts flew at him out of the wind and snow, most of them of Mandrake. It was as if he knew with certainty that this was the way Mandrake had come—up Cwmoer, over Siabod, and then up here. He remembered Mandrake again, his power and despair, but most of all he remembered Mandrake’s last sad cries to Rebecca by the Duncton Stone, which he had not known how to listen to. Now, as he climbed onward and upward into the cold and rocks on the far side of the valley from Siabod, he spurred himself forward by telling himself that he was at last answering Mandrake’s call. Cruel Mandrake, mad Mandrake, but a mole that Rebecca had loved. And if, as he climbed, he fancied he saw in the flurries of snow and the changing shadows of the contorted rocks the shape of a great and lumbering mole, what then? It no longer mattered. Y Wrach had said that Mandrake would come back. ‘So let him come back, here now, to guide me with his knowledge and power to the great Stones, and to the Tryfan Stones themselves,’ he prayed.
Celyn had been right: these heights were wormless. What worms ever live among acid peats on a surface where only rocks seem in place?
Steep, steeper, steeply dangerous drops fell beneath his slipping talons, which could hardly hold on to the icy rocks. Falls into black rocks far below, wind racing up sheer faces along whose very edge he had to climb. No place for moles.
Steeper and steeper, into the sky itself. Then suddenly, quite suddenly, the terrain was rounded and flat and on top of the world. Between blasts of wind he could make out square and random shapes of rocks stretching eerily away on flat ground, and piled like jumbled slates one on top of another, or toppled over on their sides, or rising in a fan like the spines of a dead hedgehog. Blacks and whites, snow and ice, eerie silences around corners of spined, black rock.
Sudden rushing of winds and ebbs. All in a high land of shattered rock whose edges were sometimes square, sometimes sharp, always changing as a mole approached them, or passed them by, or flying snow hid them. And strange silences.
Great strength began to surge into Bracken, for he knew that at last he was within reach of Castell y Gwynt. Somewhere in this flat land of waste that was sterile of all life but himself and a few gale-bent tufts of heather, the stones they wrongly called the Stones of Siabod stood. They were beyond Siabod.
And then, off to his right, as he turned away from a great tower of rocks, he heard through the wind the whistling and howling of more wind which came louder and softer, as varied in its range as only one other thing he had ever known: the sounds in the Chamber of Roots beneath the Duncton Stone. The sound of Castell y Gwynt.
The ground was now pure loose rock, if rocks a hundred thousand times the size of a mole can ever be called loose. His vision was still obscured by racing, powdered snow, so he clambered blindly on towards the sound, awe and fear growing in his heart as it grew louder and more varied, menacing and sweet. The sound grew louder and was somewhere in the sky above him, the sound of wind among rock, twisting and swirling in and out of the hollows and flutes and rises and falls of rock. Sharp rocks, talons of rocks, a rock mass that rose from out of the snow and now was steep and massive before him, and he stopped in wonder before its great power and raised a paw as if to touch its great talons with his own, his mouth open in wonder. Castell y Gwynt. Castle of the Winds.
So much suffering to get here. So much struggle. And Rebecca… ‘What of my Rebecca? Are these the Stones I’ve lost you for? And which of you are the Tryfan Stones?’
As his eyes searched among the rising stones, each of which was four or five times the height of the Duncton Stone and whose tops were obscured again and again: ‘Is the Stone here? What must a mole do to reach up to it? Why so much suffering for this? Why so much suffering at all?’
But as he stood doubtful before the Stones, what great shape rose behind him among the other stones of the plateau of Gwynt and urged him to trust the Stone? He thought he heard a mole, a massive mole, the sound of life, and turned round to see… but there was nothing but the howling of the wind through the rocks behind him, and those of the Castell y Gwynt above.
‘Well,’ he whispered softly to himself, at last, ‘well, what am I anyway, unless I’m part of it, whatever it may be?’ Then Bracken began to pray to the Stone, before the Stones, and say those words that so long before Mandrake, standing in this very spot, might himself have said if only he had had the love of Rebecca then, or had known Boswell, or had been graced to hear the silence of the Duncton Stone. Bracken prayed for the moles of Siabod, he gave thanks for the life within himself, he prayed that the Stone would protect Rebecca wherever it had taken her. He prayed to the memory of Skeat and in honour of the scribemoles of Uffington. He prayed that Boswell would know these prayers had been made. As he prayed, and the cold wind began to die, and he noticed nothing of himself but his silence in the Stone, he brought the worship of the Stone back to Siabod and the black heights beyond it.
When he thought he had finished, he found he had not. He prayed again for his Rebecca and thanked the Stone for the love that they had seen. And he wondered, curiously, which of the Stones were the Stones of Tryfan.
Then he was finished and became suddenly cold, so he turned at last from the Stones to find the winds growing lighter and the snow almost finished. Beneath him, only a few moleyards off, he saw a cliff edge at the top of a steep, snow-filled drop into a cwm that went down and down as far as anymole could sense, and further. Beyond it, the swirling snow danced in the wind, growing lighter and weaker as it faded away, and there came slowly through it not light but black darkness that rose before him as the snow cleared in a steepness of more rock. It rose higher and higher as his eyes widened in wonder and awe and the snow finally swirled away, revealing a massive, isolated peak on top of which there stood other Stones he could sense, but not see. The Stones of Tryfan, he knew.
‘But it’s impossible, ’ he whispered, ‘impossible for mole—’ for though Tryfan seemed so close across the void between, almost within a talon’s touch, it was impossible to reach. He now gazed at it in wonder as, so long before, Mandrake had gazed at it in fear. And as Mandrake had stepped forward to touch it in contempt, so now Bracken stepped forward, his paw outstretched in wonder, for he saw that a mole can touch the Stone, he can, he can; but as he tried, he was falling forward and rolling into steep snow, tumbling over, the peak of Tryfan rising higher and higher above him, rising away from his grasp as he fell down into the nameless cwm that had gaped beneath him and now took him. Snow flurried down as he fell, rolling on into an avalanche, carrying him down and down and further down, and faster, snow all around him worse than a blizzard, and a sliding avalanche of silence building up about him as the cwm echoed outside the snow that enveloped him and of which he was a tumbling part. Far, far above him the two Stones of Tryfan stood out in a clearing sky.
As Bracken fell into white silence, the wind across on Siabod began to die away and the blizzard to stop. But Rebecca knew it had come too late for her; she might still have struggled alone down the slopes, and she might even have managed to carry a single pup. But she looked at the four that lay against her teats but were now no longer able to get milk from them, felt them grow colder and colder against her encompassing belly and knew she could not leave three to die alone.