Duncton Quest by William Horwood

tree. A growth that has a life of its own, and drains the life from that on which it grows. Malignant, parasitic... and odiferous, for when it breaks, the smell of a wen was believed to be fatally poisonous to mole.
    To the east, it was said, such a place existed, where nomole could live because the noise, the dangers, the very air itself was unpalatable and dangerous to mole. There, it was said, twofoots and other great vile creatures roamed of whom the many grim tales were the stuff of which a young mole’s nightmares are made; and it was the home of the roaring owls.
    “But where is it exactly ?” a youngster might ask his parent, looking fearfully over his shoulder (for such fears always lie behind a mole in the shadows outside a snouting’s range).
    But the answer was clearer than that: to the east of the most easterly of the Seven Systems, which is Duncton Wood, a mole gets progressively nearer the Wen, but he had best never get anywhere near where it actually starts... Which was answer enough.
    It was towards this supposed place that, much later, travelling scribemoles, bravely reporting on the state of moledom, established that Dunbar had travelled, and probably taken with him a copy of the Book of the Word. Certainly enough records were left behind in the eastern systems to trace his route, until at last specific record of him was lost, replaced instead by stories and legends that he had gone ever more eastwards and was lost for all time in the darkness there. Of his final end, or that of his followers, none knew, but few doubt that it was terrible and grim, and that the fatal Book he carried, and the knowledge he and his few followers had, was forever lost as well.
    Why he took the Book of the Word with him, or whether he took any other book, is never told in the legends of Dunbar, though it is hinted at in the most famous of them, which suggests that somewhere in the heart of the Wen he hoped that the infamous Book would be kept until “the schism is complete and ended’. And when that happened a mole would come forth from the Wen who would bring peace to moledom, and a sacred knowledge, and a hope for all moles.
    So Dunbar went from history, to remain only in memory as a mole who established a race of mythical Wen moles, beings who live in a place that nomole can reach, far to the east, where to breathe the air is death for a mole. Of course there are many legends of the Wen, and the notion that special moles survive there is a common one, as, too, is the idea that one day, from such a place, a great saviour will come at a time when the shadows are long and dark over moledom and he is most needed. Whatever the truth of that, the legend concerning Dunbar was right to talk of a schism, for many date the beginning of the decline of the faith in the Stone in moledom from the Scirpuscan revolt and Dunbar’s strange departure from Uffington.
    Indeed, something is known of the fate of Scirpus, that most dark of moles. After the split from Dunbar he trekked northward, back towards the system from which he came, and so charismatic was his leadership that many joined him. His trek north became a march, which many joined, and he led them to a place which lies beyond the Dark Peak and the inhospitable moors where nomole had lived. Yet there Scirpus brought his followers, a place of enormous tunnels and rushing water, and dangers uncharted. It had no name, but in time moles gave it one after the mythical evil system of legend and story, where malevolent giant moles were said to roam: the System of Whern.
    It was there that Scirpus developed the first Scirpuscan Community, and it became notorious for its harsh discipline and punishment. There he first tried out ideas later incorporated into the set of principles (which he later called a Rule, the Rule of the Word) by which systems should be ordered, establishing clear hierarchies (which are anathema to faith in the Stone) and punishment to death for transgressions of the