Free Duncton Stone by William Horwood

make rocks weep and flowers open before their time!”
    Privet laughed.
    “Oh, I’m serious,” said the guard, mildly offended.
    “It’s not you I’m laughing at!” said Privet. “It’s just that I never expected such things from a Newborn guard holding me as a prisoner and taking me to Wildenhope to be judged by Quail.”
    “Quail’s a different mole altogether from Thripp,” said the guard darkly. “Why do you think the Brother Commander’s so eager to get away to Cannock? Mind you, it’s obscurity for him, more’s the pity.”
    “Obscurity?”
    “Well, I shouldn’t say it, but Thorne’s the best we’ve got. You can feed the commanders Quail favours to the roaring owls as far as I’m concerned. Whatmole was it neutralized Siabod? Thorne. Whatmole was it avoided real conflict with Rooster and that not so long? Thorne. Whatmole kept the peace when Quail’s lot wanted violence? Thorne! But since Quail’s taken control things have changed. I reckon he would eliminate Thorne if he dared, but he’s done the next best thing and sent him north to obscurity.”
    The guardmole fell silent, taken aback it seemed by his sudden outburst, and peered quizzically at Privet.
    “Humph! You make a mole talk, you do! I can see what Fagg meant – you’re a dangerous mole.”
    There was a long rumble of distant thunder.
    “Here it comes!”
    And shortly afterwards the rain did come, heavily and with driving winds so that the two guardmoles squeezed in with Privet for shelter. She had felt strangely comforted by their conversation, and humbled too – some of the Newborns at least were decent moles after all, and their words confirmed the impression of Thripp she had formed at Caer Caradoc: he was not by any means all bad, and nor did she believe he was all finished either. Now each of them must seek to fulfil their task, once they had found out what it was.
    “What is my task. Stone?” she wondered.
    The storm seemed to circle about them through the night, but the only lightning she saw was distant, and diffused by cloud.
    “I know what my task is,” she admitted to herself in the darkness, and she was afraid, terribly afraid, for it was one nomole would help her with, not even Rooster. Her fear completely overrode the apprehension she felt about what was to happen to them at Wildenhope, however terrible it might be. She felt comforted by the warmth of the guardmoles’ flanks on either side of her and sometime between a distant flash of lightning and the dark sound of thunder, she drifted into sleep.

    When dawn came, and all the moles were instructed to move off once more, the storm had passed by, but the rain still fell. It was persistent, though not heavy, and it came out of the low grey base of clouds swirling only a little way above the trees of the wood that ran the length of the top of the Edge. The ground was now wet and slippery, and as the day wore on the moles followed one another in silence, tired and depressed, the way ahead seeming interminable.
    In the afternoon they turned upslope through a gap in the wood, whose trees dripped dankly on either side of them as the route ran gradually to the crest of the Edge itself As they neared it their ears were assailed by a roaring sound which they took to be wind driving up the escarpment’s face from the west and stirring the trees. Certainly a fresh breeze blew and nagged at their wet fur; it chilled them, and kept them wanting to move.
    But the roaring was more than wind: it was the rush of water. Despite the lowering, murky sky the view down to the vale below was clear enough, if grey, and they saw that the river they had crossed much further upstream before ascending the Edge with Maple and Whillan was now white, and full, and angry. In several places along its course temporary streams of flood-water, yellow-white, flowed down into it, swelling it; as they picked their way along the slippery path and could see it more clearly they saw that it grew