Illustrated by Charles Keeping

For J. H.

“Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower came”

King Lear act iii, sc 4

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Why You’ll Love This Book

1. Thursday’s Child

2. Cloth of Gold

3. Dead Loss

4. Malebron

5. The Mound of Vandwy

6. The Lay of the Starved Fool

7. Corporation Property

8. The Deep End

9. Stat

10. Choke

11. The Last Spadeful

12. The Letterbox

13. “Silent Night”

14. The High Places

15. Planchette

16. The Fix

17. Spear-Edge and Shield-Rim

18. Paddy

19. The Wasteland

20. The Song of Findhorn

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Why You’ll Love This Book

By Jonathan Stroud

How old was I? About ten. I took an Alan Garner book (it was The Weirdstone of Brisingamen), flopped into a chair and opened it up. And that was that. The Sunday afternoon grew old; my family moved about me, talking loudly, making the tea, calling questions in my ear – their sounds were muted, far away. Alan Garner’s magic had me captured: I sat like a stone in the midst of all the humdrum bustle of the house, walking with wizards, gazing on sleeping kings. The fantastic and the ordinary were overlaid upon each other – and I was trapped between the two.

In all Alan Garner’s work the mythic and the mundane collide, and Elidor is no exception. Odd things happen in everyday places and to everyday things, and the results are strange and sinister: an eye stares in through a letterbox – but the porch beyond is empty; the shadows of two men (who are not present) are seen in a suburban garden – hanging vertically in mid-air; all the electrical equipment in a house starts by itself, and continues to buzz and whirr even with the plugs pulled out… The characters in the story who experience these events find themselves just as trapped as I was in my reading, but they cannot close the book and set it down.

How does it all begin? Four children in mid-Twentieth Century Manchester find a doorway to another world. You might expect (having read other stories with such doors) that this is the beginning of a quest in which the other world is thoroughly explored, evil defeated and the heroes return home triumphant.

But it doesn’t work that way.

The land of Elidor is dying, almost dead. It is an empty, unpopulated waste and the children spend very little time there before returning home with four treasures that might one day help Elidor be reborn. And from that instant the power of those treasures and the threat of the enemies who seek to break through after them turn the family’s cottage into a border between worlds, and the pleasant adventure the reader might have anticipated becomes something much more desperate and defensive.

All borders are no-man’s-lands, where the known and unknown meet, safety and danger overlap, and meanings shift and blur. They are populated by fools, vagrants, tricksters and the tricked. And now, thanks to the children’s actions, their house is such a gate. The front door opens on to their street and on to a wilderness in Elidor – and it does so at one and the same time. And something nasty is seeking to get through…

How old am I now? Late thirties. And when I read Elidor again I realise that the wizardry that captured me a quarter of a century ago still holds me tight. Like all writers of my generation, I owe Alan Garner an unpayable debt. Novels like Elidor are themselves a boundary, set like standing stones between earlier tales of movement between worlds and recent books (so common now) that mingle magic with the day-to-day. But Elidor is more rigorous and less complacent than anything that came before or after. It brings the logic of myth to bear upon modern children’s fiction and does so without a shred of sentimentality. After forty years it is knife-sharp still, and not a word is wasted. It thrums with a wild, harsh beauty and a power that most fantasies can only dream of. Read on, and let it transfix you too.

Jonathan Stroud

Jonathan Stroud is the author of the world acclaimed Bartimaeus Trilogy. The three titles of the trilogy, published between 2003 and 2005, have been on the Bestseller lists in the UK, US, Japan and Germany. Formerly a children’s book editor, Jonathan has also written three previous novels for young adults. He lives in St Albans with his wife, a children’s book designer and illustrator, and their two young children.

CHAPTER 1

THURSDAY’S CHILD

“All right,” said Nicholas. “You’re fed up. So am I. But we’re better off here than at home.”

“It wouldn’t be as cold as this,” said David.

“That’s what you say. Remember how it was last time we moved? Newspapers on the floor, and everyone sitting on packing cases. No thanks!”

“We’re spent up,” said David. “There isn’t even enough for a cup of tea. So what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. Think of something.”

They sat on the bench behind the statue of Watt. The sculptor had given him a stern face, but the pigeons had made him look as though he was just very sick of Manchester.

“We could go and ride one of the lifts in Lewis’s again,” said Helen.

“I’ve had enough of that,” said Nicholas. “And anyway, they were watching us: we’d be chucked off.”

“What about the escalators?”

“They’re no fun in this crowd.”

“Then let’s go home,” said David. “Hey, Roland, have you finished driving that map?”

Roland stood a few yards away, turning the handles of a street map. It was a tall machine of squares and wheels and lighted panels.

“It’s smashing,” he said. “Come and look. See this roller? It’s the street index: each one has its own letter and number. You can find any street in Manchester. It’s easy. Watch.”

Roland spun a wheel at the side of the map, and the index whirled round, a blur under the glass.

“There must be some pretty smooth gears inside,” said Nicholas.

The blur began to flicker as the revolving drum lost speed. Roland pressed his finger on the glass.

“We’ll find the one I’m pointing at when it stops,” he said.

The drum turned slowly, and the names ticked by: and the drum stopped.

“Thursday Street,” said Helen. “Mind your finger. ‘Ten, seven L’.”

“Ten will be the postal district,” said Roland. “You turn the map wheel until number seven is level with these squares painted red on the glass, and then Thursday Street is in square L. There.”

“I can’t see it,” said Nicholas.

The map square was full of small roads, some too short to hold the name even when it was abbreviated. But at last the children found a ‘Th. S.’ jumbled among the letters.

“Titchy, isn’t it?” said David.

“It’s such a funny name,” said Roland. “Thursday Street. Shall we go and see what it’s like?”

“What?”

“It’s not far. We’re in Piccadilly here, and Thursday Street’s off to the right up Oldham Road. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“I might have known you’d think of something daft,” said Nicholas.

“But let’s do it,” said Helen. “Please, Nick. You and David’ll only start scrapping if we don’t. And when we’ve found it we’ll go home: then nobody’s bossed about.”

“OK,” said David. “That’s all right by me.”

“It’s still daft,” said Nicholas.

“Can you think of anything?”

“Oh, all right. This is your idea, Roland, so you take us. Can you find the way?”

“I think so. We’ll go up Oldham Road for a bit, and then cut through the back streets.”

They left Watt. David and Nicholas were better tempered now that there was something positive to be done.

“This is the turning we want,” said Roland after a while. “Down this next alley.”

“Mm,” said Nicholas. “It looks a bit niffy to me.”

The children had never been in the streets behind the shops. The change was abrupt.

“Phew!” said Helen. “All those fancy windows and posh carpets at the front, and it’s a rubbish dump at the back!”

They were in an alley that ran between loading bays and store-houses lit by unshaded bulbs: the kerb was low and had a metal edge, and there was the smell of boxwood and rotten fruit. Fans pumped hot, stale air into the children’s faces through vents that were hung with feathers of dirt.

Beyond the alley they came to a warren of grimy streets, where old women stood in the doorways, wearing sacks for aprons, and men in carpet slippers sat on the steps. Dogs nosed among crumpled paper in the gutter; a rusty bicycle wheel lay on the cobbles. A group of boys at the corner talked to a girl whose hair was rolled in brightly coloured plastic curlers.

“I don’t like this, Nick,” said Helen. “Should we go back up the alley?”

“No. They’ll think we’re scared. Look as though we know where we’re going – taking a short cut; something like that.”

As the children walked past, all the eyes in the street watched them, without interest or hostility, but the children felt very uncomfortable, and walked close together. The girl on the corner laughed, but it could have been at something one of the boys had said.

They went on through the streets.

“Perhaps it’s not a good idea,” said Roland. “Shall we go home?”

“Are you lost?” said Nicholas.

“No, but—”

“Now what’s all this?” said David.

Ahead of them the streets continued, but the houses were empty, and broken.

“That’s queer,” said Nicholas. “Come on: it looks as though Roland has something after all.”

“Let’s go back,” said Roland.

“What, just when it’s starting to be interesting? And isn’t this the way to your Thursday Street?”

“Well – sort of – yes – I think so.”

“Come on, then.”

It was not one or two houses that were empty, but row after row and street after street. Grass grew in the cobbles everywhere, and in the cracks of the pavement. Doors hung awry. Nearly all the windows were boarded up, or jagged with glass. Only at a few were there any curtains, and these twitched as the children approached. But they saw nobody.

“Isn’t it spooky?” said David. “You feel as if you ought to whisper. What if there was no one anywhere – even when we got back to Piccadilly?”

Helen looked through a window in one of the houses.

“This room’s full of old dustbins!” she said.

“What’s that chalked on the door?”

“Leave post at Number Four.”

“Number Four’s empty, too.”

“I shouldn’t like to be here at night, would you?” said Helen.

“I keep feeling we’re being watched,” said Roland.

“It’s not surprising,” said David, “with all these windows.”

“I’ve felt it ever since we were at the map in Piccadilly,” said Roland, “and all the way up Oldham Road.”

“Oh, come off it, Roland,” said Nicholas. “You’re always imagining things.”

“Look there,” said David. “They’ve started to bash the houses down. I wonder if we’ll see a demolition gang working. They do it with a big iron ball, you know. They swing it from a crane.”

Something had certainly hit the street they were in now, for only the fronts of the houses were standing, and the sky showed on the inside of windows, and staircases led up a patchwork gable end of wallpaper.

At the bottom of the row the children stopped. The streets continued, with cobbles and pavements and lamp posts – but there were no houses, just fields of rubble.

“Where’s your Thursday Street now?” said Nicholas.

“There,” said David.

He pointed to a salvaged nameplate that was balanced on a brickheap. “Thursday Street.”

“You brought us straight here, anyway, Roland,” said Nicholas. “The whole place has been flattened. It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“There’s a demolition gang!” said Helen.

Alone and black in the middle of the wasteland stood a church. It was a plain Victorian building, with buttresses and lancet windows, a steep roof, but no spire. And beside it were a mechanical excavator and a lorry.

“I can’t see anybody,” said Roland.

“They’ll be inside,” said Nicholas. “Let’s go and ask if we can watch.”

The children set off along what had been Thursday Street. But as they reached the church even Nicholas found it hard to keep up his enthusiasm, for there was neither sound nor movement anywhere.

“We’d hear them if they were working, Nick. They’ve gone home.”

David turned the iron handle on the door, and pushed. The church clanged as he rattled the heavy latch, but the door seemed to be locked.

“They wouldn’t leave all this gear lying around,” said Nicholas. “They may be having a tea-break or something.”

“The lorry’s engine’s still warm,” said Roland. “And there’s a jacket in the cab.”

“The tailboard’s down, too. They’ve not finished loading all this wood yet.”

“What is it?”

“Smashed up bits of pew and floorboards.”

“Let’s wait, then,” said Nicholas. “Is there anything else?”

“No – yes, there is. There’s a ball behind the front wheel.”

“Fetch it out, and we’ll have a game.”

Roland pulled a white plastic football from under the lorry, and then he stopped.

“What’s the matter?”

“Listen,” said Roland. “Where’s the music coming from?”

“What music? You’re hearing things.”

“No, listen, Nick. He’s right.”

A fiddle was being played. The notes were thin, and pitched high in a tune of sadness. Away from the children an old man stood alone on the corner of a street, under a broken lamp post. He was poorly dressed, and wore a crumpled hat.

“Why’s he playing here?”

“Perhaps he’s blind,” said Helen. “Hadn’t we better tell him where he is? He probably thinks there are houses all round him.”

“Blind people know things like that by echoes,” said David. “Leave him alone: he may be practising. Oh, hurry up, Roland! We’re waiting!”

Roland let go of the ball, and kicked it as it fell.

He was about twenty yards from the others, and he punted the ball to reach them on the first bounce: but instead it soared straight from his foot, up and over their heads so quickly that they could hardly follow it. And the ball was still gaining speed, and rising, when it crashed through the middle lancet of the west window of the church.

David whistled. “Bullseye, Roland! Do it again!”

“Shh!” said Helen.

“It doesn’t matter. They’re pulling the place down, aren’t they?”

“I didn’t kick it very hard,” said Roland.

“Not much!”

“Never mind,” said Helen, “I’ll go and see if I can climb in.”

“We’ll all go,” said David.

“No. Stay here in case the gang comes back,” said Helen, and she disappeared round the corner of the church.

“Trust you to break a window,” said Nicholas.

“I’m sorry, Nick: I didn’t mean to. I just kicked the ball, and it seemed to fly by itself.”

“It flew by itself,” said Nicholas. “Here we go again!”

“But it did!” said Roland. “When I kicked the ball, the – the fiddle seemed to stick on a note. Didn’t you hear it? It went right through my head. And it got worse and worse, all the time the ball was in the air, until the window broke. Didn’t you hear the music?”

“No. And I don’t now. And I don’t see your fiddler, either. He’s gone.”

“There’s something odd, though,” said David. “It was only a plastic ball, but it’s snapped the leading in the window.”

“Oh, it was certainly a good kick from old Roland,” said Nicholas. “And listen: your fiddler’s at it again.”

The music was faint, but although the tune was the same as before, it was now urgent, a wild dance; faster; higher; until the notes merged into one tone that slowly rose past the range of hearing. For a while the sound could still be felt. Then there was nothing.

“What’s Helen doing?” said Nicholas. “Hasn’t she found it yet?”

“She may not be able to climb in,” said David. “I’ll go and see.”

“And tell her to hurry up,” said Nicholas.

“OK.”

Nicholas and Roland waited.

“I never knew there were places like this, did you, Nick?”

“I think it’s what they call ‘slum clearance’,” said Nicholas. “A lot of the houses were bombed in the war, you know, and those that weren’t are being pulled down to make room for new flats. That’ll be why all those streets were empty. They’re the next for the chop.”

“Where do all the people live while the flats are being built?” said Roland.

“I don’t know. But have you noticed? If we’d carried on right across here, the next lot of houses aren’t empty. Perhaps those people will move into the flats that are built here. Then that block of streets can be knocked down.”

“There’s the fiddle again!” said Roland. It was distant, as before, and fierce. “But I can’t see the old man. Where is he?”

“What’s the matter with you today, Roland? Stop dithering: he’ll be somewhere around.”

“Yes, but where? He was by the lamp post a second ago, and it’s miles to the houses. We couldn’t hear him and not see him.”

“I’d rather know where Helen and David have got to,” said Nicholas. “If they don’t hurry up the gang’ll be back before we’ve found the ball.”

“Do you think they’re all right—”

“Of course they are. They’re trying to have us on.”

“They may be stuck, or locked in,” said Roland.

“They’d have shouted,” said Nicholas. “No: they’re up to something. You wait here, in case they try to sneak out. I’m going to surprise them.”

Roland sat down on a broken kitchen chair that was a part of the landscape. He was cold.

Then the music came again.

Roland jumped up, but there was no fiddler in sight, and he could not make out which direction the sound was coming from.

“Nick!”

The music faded.

“Nick! – Nick!”

The wasteland was bigger in the late afternoon light; the air quiet; and the houses seemed to be painted in the dusk. They were as alien as a coastline from the sea. A long way off, a woman pushed a pram.

“Nick!”

Roland picked his way over the rubble to the other side of the church, and here he found a door which sagged open on broken hinges: two floorboards were nailed across the doorway. Roland climbed through into a passage with several small rooms leading off it. Water trickled from a fractured pipe. There were the smells of soot and cat.

The rooms were empty except for the things that are always left behind. There were some mouldering Sunday school registers; a brass-bound Bible; a faded sepia photograph of the Whitsun procession of 1909; a copy of Kirton’s Standard Temperance Reciter, Presented to John Beddowes by the Pendlebury Band of Hope, February 1888. There was a broken saucer. There was a jam jar furred green with long-dried water.

“Nick!”

Roland went through into the body of the church.

The floorboards and joists had been taken away, leaving the bare earth: everything movable had been ripped out down to the brick. The church was a cavern. Above Roland’s head the three lancets of the west window glowed like orange candles against the fading light. The middle lancet, the tallest, was shattered, and the glass lay on the earth. But there was no ball.

“Nick! Helen! David! Where are you?”

The dusk hung like mist in the church.

Roland went back to the passage. At the end was a staircase. The banisters had been pulled out, but the steps remained.

“David! Nick! Come down: please don’t hide! I don’t like it!”

No one answered. Roland’s footsteps thumped on the stairs. Two rooms opened off a landing at the top, and both were empty.

“Nick!”

The echo filled the church.

“Nick!”

Round, and round, his voice went, and through it came a noise. It was low and vibrant, like wind in a chimney. It grew louder, more taut, and the wall blurred, and the floor shook. The noise was in the fabric of the church: it pulsed with sound. Then he heard a heavy door open; and close; and the noise faded away. It was now too still in the church, and footsteps were moving over the rubble in the passage downstairs.

“Who’s that?” said Roland.

The footsteps reached the stairs, and began to climb.

“Who’s there?”

“Do not be afraid,” said a voice.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The footsteps were at the top of the stairs. A shadow fell across the landing.

“No!” cried Roland. “Don’t come any nearer!”

The fiddler stood in the doorway.

“I shall not harm you. Take the end of my bow, and lead me. The stairs are dangerous.”

He was bent, and thin; he limped; his voice was old; there looked to be no strength in him; and he was between Roland and the stairs. He stretched out his fiddle bow.

“Help me.”

“All – all right.”

Roland put his hand forward to take the bow, but as he was about to touch it a shock struck his finger tips, driving light through his forehead between the eyes. It was as though a shutter had been lifted in his mind, and in the moment before it dropped again he saw something; but it went so quickly that all he could hold was the shape of its emptiness.

“What did you see?”

“See? I didn’t – see. I – through my fingers – See? Towers – like flame. A candle in darkness. A black wind.”

“Lead me.”

“Yes.”

Roland went down the stairs, a step at a time, dazed but no longer frightened. The church was somehow remote from him now, and flat, like a piece of stage scenery. The only real things were the fiddler and his bow.

“I heard your music,” said Roland. “Why were you playing so far away from people?”

“I was near you. Are you not people?” They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and were standing on the earth floor of the church. “Give me my bow.”

“I can’t stay,” said Roland. But the old man put the fiddle to his shoulder. “I’m looking for my sister, and my two brothers—” The old man began to play. “—and I must find them before dark—” It was the wild dance. “—and we’ve a train to catch. What’s that noise? – Please! – Stop! – It’s hurting!—Please!—”

The air took up the fiddle’s note. It was the sound Roland had heard upstairs, but now it was louder, building waves that jarred the church, and went through Roland’s body until he felt that he was threaded on the sound.

“—Please!—”

“Now! Open the door!”

“I can’t! It’s locked!”

“Open it! There is little time!”

“But—!”

“Now!”

Roland stumbled to the door, grasped the iron handle and pulled with all his weight. The door opened, and he ran out on to the cobbles of the street, head down, driven by the noise.

But he never reached the far pavement, for the cobbles were moving under him. He turned. The outline of the church rippled in the air, and vanished. He was standing among boulders on a sea shore, and the music died into the crash of breakers, and the long fall of surf.

CHAPTER 2

CLOTH OF GOLD

A cliff rose above him, and at the top were the ruins of a castle. He was confused by the noise that had shaken the church, but the cold thrill and burn of the spray woke him.

Roland walked along the shore. The cliff was an islet separated from the mainland by a channel of foam. High over his head a drawbridge spanned the gap, and there was no other way to cross. He would have to climb, and climb soon, for even as he tried to find the best place to start, a wave dragged at the rocks. The tide was coming in.

The rocks sloped on one side, and were never more than a hard scramble: but the height was bad. The sound of the water dropped away and there was no wind. The cliff thrust him outwards, and each movement felt too violent for him to be able to keep his balance, and the tendons in his wrists were strained by the pressure of his grip on every hold. He knew better than to look down, but once he looked up, and the whole mass of the castle toppled slowly towards him. After that, he forced himself to see only what was within reach of his hand.

The foundations of the castle were smooth masonry curving to the vertical wall, but between the foundations and the bedrock there was a ledge which Roland worked himself along until he reached the drawbridge.

The chains that raised the bridge had been cut, and he was able to use one of them to pull himself up to the level of the gatehouse. The bridge itself was undamaged, but the gatehouse had fallen in. Roland climbed through into the courtyard.

There were four towers to the castle, one at each corner of the broken walls, and in the middle of the courtyard stood a massive keep. It was high, with few windows.

“Hello!” Roland called.

There was no reply. Roland went through the doorway of the keep into a great hall, cold and dim, and spanned by beams. The floor was strewn with dead roses, and the air heavy with their decay.

An arch in one corner led to a spiral staircase. Here the light came through slits in the wall, and was so poor that for most of the time Roland had to grope his way in darkness.

The first room was an armoury, lined with racks, which held a few swords, pikes, and shields. It took up the whole width of the keep.

Roland drew a sword from one of the racks. The blade was sharp, and well greased. And that was another strange thing about the castle. Although it was a ruin, the scars were fresh. The tumbled stone was unweathered and all the windows held traces of glass.

He replaced the sword: it was too heavy to be of use.

Roland continued up the stairs to the next door. He opened it and looked into a barren room. Shreds of tapestry hung against the walls like skeletons of leaves, and there was one high window of three lancets… and the glass of the middle lancet was scattered on the floor… and in the hearth opposite the window lay a white plastic football.

Roland took the ball between his hands, just as he had pulled it from under the lorry. The pattern of stitches: the smear of oil and brick dust: it was the same.

He stared at the ball, and as he stared he heard a man singing. He could not hear the words, but the voice was young, and the tune filled Roland with a yearning that was both pain and gladness in one.

Where’s it coming from? he thought. The next room up?

If only he could hear the words. Whoever was singing, he had to hear. But as he moved, the voice stopped.

“No,” whispered Roland.

The ball dropped from his fingers, and for a long time he listened to its slow bounce – bounce – bounce – down – and round – until that was lost.

“He must be up there.”

Roland started to climb. He came to the room above; the last room, for ahead the curve of the stairs grew brighter as it opened on to the top of the keep.

There was no one in the room. But under the window stood a low, white, marble table, and draped from one end, as though it had been jerked off, was a tapestry of cloth of gold.

Roland went to the table. It was quite plain, except for the shape of a sword cut deep in the stone. He picked up the golden tapestry and spread it over the table. It dropped with the folds of long, untouched use, and the impression of the sword was in the cloth. And as he stepped back Roland felt the castle tremble, and the voice drifted to him through the window, far away, but so clear that he caught broken snatches of the words.

“Fair is this land for all time…

Beneath snowfall of flowers…”

“O, wait for me!” cried Roland. “Don’t go!”

“A magic land, and full of song…”

He sprang up the steps and on to the battlement of the keep.

“Green Isle of the Shadow of the Stars.”

All around sea and air mingled to a grey light, and the waves were silver darts on the water. From the drawbridge a road went up towards hills and into a forest that covered the lower slopes. On the road, moving away from the castle, Roland saw the fiddler.

CHAPTER 3

DEAD LOSS

By the time Roland was clear of the gatehouse the fiddler had reached the trees. Roland hurried after him.

For a while the road passed charred stumps of buildings, and field rank with nettle. Dust, or ash, kicked up under Roland’s feet, muffling his walk and coating his body so aridly that his skin rasped. Flies whined round him, and crawled in his hair, and tried to settle on his lips. The sky was dull, yet there was a brittleness in the light that hurt. It was no longer wonder that led him, but dislike of being alone.

Even the singing had lost its enchantment. For now that the old man had appeared again Roland recognised where he had heard the song before: the fiddler had played it. And so what he had imagined to be the music of his dreams was only the jingle of a half-learned tune.

Although Roland wanted to catch up with the man, he wanted less and less to reach the forest. He could make out nothing sinister at first, apart from a general atmosphere of gloom and stillness, and it was not until he was close that he knew why this forest was different from all others. The trees were dead.

Roland looked back: but he had nowhere else to go, and at that distance the castle was a tortured crag. He clutched a handful of gravel and rubbed it against his cheek. It hurt. It was real. He was there. He had only himself.

Within the forest the road dwindled to a line of mud that strayed wherever there was ground to take it: fungus glowed in the twilight, and moss trailed like hair from the branches. There was the silence of death over everything: a silence that was more powerful for the noises it contained – the far off crash of trees, and the voices of cold things hidden in the fog that moved in ribbons where there was no wind. Oaks became black water at a touch.

Roland could not tell how long he had struggled, nor how far, when the trees thinned on to moorland below a skyline of rock. The forest held neither hours nor miles, and all that he had been able to do was to wade from one bog into the next, to climb over one rotting trunk to the next, and to hope for an end to the slime.

He walked a few shambling steps clear of the trees, and collapsed in the grass. He had lost the road, and he was alone.

When he opened his eyes Roland thought that he would never move again. The chill had seeped through his body and locked him to the ground.

He turned on to his side, and dragged himself to a sitting position, his head on his knees, too cold to shiver.

However long he had slept, nothing had changed. The light was just the same, the sky unbroken.

He began to walk uphill towards the rocks. They were higher than he had thought – packed columns of granite, splintered by frost and ribbed by wind – but he scrambled amongst them up weathered gullies to the top.

Here Roland found himself on a broad ridge shelving away to a plain which stretched into the haze. Nothing showed. No villages; no houses; no light; no smoke. He was alone. Behind him the hill dropped to the forest, and he could see no end to that. The only proof that anyone had ever lived in this land was close by him, but it gave Roland little comfort.

A circle of standing stones crowned the hill. They were unworked and top-heavy; three times bigger than a man and smooth as flint. They rose from the ground like clenched fists. Roland walked into the circle which was easily four hundred yards wide, and at the middle he stopped and gazed round him.

From the circle an avenue of stones marched along the ridge, and these were sharp blades of rock, as tall as the circle, but cruel and thin. They went straight to a round hill, a mile away.

If possible, the air was quieter here: so quiet that it was as if the silence lay in Roland. He avoided making any noise, for fear that the stillness would not be broken.

But how many stones were there in the circle? Roland started to count from the left of the avenue – eighty-eight. Or did he miss one right at the end? Try again – eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven. It may have been that his eyes were tired, but the flick, flick, flick, flick, flick of the pale shapes as he counted them was making the stones in the corner of his vision seem to move – eighty-four, eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine. Just once more. One, two three, five, six – no. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven – the air was like a deafness about him.

Why am I bothering to count? thought Roland.

“You must stay until you have counted them all.”

Yes, I must – who said that? Roland caught himself looking over his shoulder.

I did. I must be cracked.

The silence was so complete that his thought had sounded as loud as a voice.

I’m getting out of this.

Roland sprinted across the circle, intent only on reaching the open hill-top, and he did not notice at first that he was running into the mouth of the avenue. He swerved aside towards a gap between the stones, but as he approached, the perspective seemed to alter, to become reversed, so that instead of growing broader the gap appeared to shrink. He could not pass through.

Roland changed direction, bewildered by his misjudgement of distance – and now he was going into the avenue again. Eighty-six. Eighty-seven. Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine. Ninety. Stones don’t move. There’s plenty of room between them.

He fixed his eyes on one gap, and made for it.

These huge boulders were spaced many times their own width apart, yet as Roland drew near, instinct told him that the gap was not wide enough. He kept jerking back, as though from an unseen obstacle in the dark. Stones – don’t – move. There’s plenty – of room. He could see that there was, but even in the last yard he flinched from the stones, and the moment of passing through tore a great, wordless cry from his throat.

“I’m imagining things,” said Roland.

The abruptness with which his fear had left him was frightening in itself, for the instant Roland crossed out of the circle the stones shrank in his mind to their true size.

“You could drive a bus between them!”

But even so, the air was less stifled now, and nothing moved when he counted.—Eighty-one. Again.—Eighty-one. No trouble at all.

Roland decided to follow the avenue to the hill. He would have a better view from there, and perhaps something would give direction to his wandering: but he kept well clear of the standing stones, walking below them on the ridge.

It soon became obvious that the hill, for all its mass, was not a part of the ridge but an artificial mound, completely circular, and flat-topped.

The avenue ended at a dry moat, or ditch, that went round the hill. Roland slithered into the ditch, ran across its broad floor, and started to climb. The turf was like glass under his shoes.

From the top of the mound there was one landmark, in front of him on the plain, far off.

A heap of rocks. No, thought Roland, it’s towers – and walls: all broken. Another castle. That’s not much use. What else?

Roland screwed up his eyes, and after a while he thought he could make out a form that was more substantial than the shifting cloud, away to his left.

A castle. Black. Dead loss.—There’s got to be something.

But the view showed only desolation. Plain, ridge, forest, sea, all were spent. Even colour had been drained from the light, and Roland saw everything, his own flesh and clothes, in shades of grey, as if in a photograph.

Three castles.

He looked to his right. Here the dark was like thunder, impenetrable. Then—It came, and went, and came again.

It’s a light. On a hill. Very faint – like – a candle – dying – towers! Golden towers!

Roland could never remember whether he saw it, or whether it was a picture in his mind, but as he strained to pierce the haze, his vision seemed to narrow and to draw the castle towards him. It shone as if the stones had soaked in light, as if stone could be amber. People were moving on the walls: metal glinted. Then clouds drifted over.

Roland was back on the hill-top, but that spark in the mist across the plain had driven away the exhaustion, the hopelessness. It was the voice outside the keep: it was a tear of the sun.

He started for the castle at once. He crabbed down, braking with his hands. It would be all right now. It would be all right: all right now. He landed in a heap at the bottom of the mound. Close by his head four fingers of a woollen glove stuck out of the turf.

Four fingers of a woollen glove pointing out of the mound, and the turf grew smooth between each finger, without a mark on it.

Roland crept his hand forward and – the glove was empty. He dragged a penknife out of his pocket and began to hack at the turf. The root mantle lay only two inches deep on white quartz, and he cut back and peeled the turf like matting. It came in a strip, a fibrous mould of the glove below, with four neat holes. The fingers and the cuff were free, but the thumb went straight into the quartz.

Roland looked for the name tape inside the cuff. He found it: Helen R. Watson.

He stabbed the turf, but he could find no break in the quartz, nothing that he could lift. The glove was fused into the rock. There were no cracks, no lesions. The thumb went into unflawed rock, and turf had covered it.

Roland jerked the glove, but he could not move it. He threw his weight against it in all directions, and the glove twisted and swung him to his knees. He wrestled, but the glove dragged him down in exhaustion, handcuffed to the mound.

He knelt, his head on his forearm, looking at the quartz: white; cold; hard; clean.—But a stain was growing over it: his shadow, blacker and blacker. The light was changing. And from the drift of the shadow Roland knew that the cause of the brightness was moving up close behind him.

CHAPTER 4

MALEBRON

It was a man with yellow hair. He wore a golden cloak, a golden shield on his arm. In his hand was a spear, and its head was like flame.

“Is there light in Gorias?” he said.

“Help me,” said Roland. “The glove.”

“Is there light?” said the man.

“The glove,” said Roland. “Helen.”

He could think of nothing, do nothing. His head rang with heartbeats, and the hill spun. He lay on the turf. And slowly a quietness grew, like sleep, and in the quietness he could hold the glove so that it was not a grappling hand. The man stood, unmoving, and the words came back to Roland as he had heard them before the table of the cloth of gold. The table: the castle: and the man – nothing else showed the colour of life in all this wasted land.

The man’s face was slender, with high cheekbones, and the locks of his hair swept backwards as if in a wind.

“Who are you?” whispered Roland.

“Malebron of Elidor.”

“What’s that?” said Roland.

“Is there light in Gorias?”

“I don’t understand,” said Roland.

The man began to climb the hill, but he was lame. One foot dragged. He did not look to see whether Roland was following.

“Are you hurt?” said Roland.

“Wounds do not heal in Elidor.”

“There was a fiddler,” said Roland. “He’d got a bad leg. I had to help him—”

“Now that you have come,” said Malebron, “I need not skulk, in beggar’s rags again. Look.” They were at the top of the mound. He pointed to the distant ruined keep.

“There is Findias, Castle of the South. And the forest, Mondrum: the fairest wood in Elidor.”

“It was you?” said Roland. “You? Then you must have been watching me all the time! You just dumped me by the cliff – and left me – and what have you done with Helen? And David and Nick? What’s happened?” shouted Roland.

But his voice had no power in the air, and Malebron waited, ignoring him, until Roland stopped.

“And Falias, and Murias,” he said. “Castles of the West and of the North. There on the plain beneath.”

He spoke the names of castle and wood as if they were precious things, not three black fangs and a swamp.

“But Gorias, in the east – what did you see?”

“I – saw a castle,” said Roland. “It was all golden – and alive. Then I saw the glove. She—”

“You have known Mondrum, and those ravaged walls,” said Malebron. “The grey land, the dead sky. Yet what you saw in Gorias once shone throughout Elidor, from the Hazel of Fordruim, to the Hill of Usna. So we lived, and no strife between us. Now only in Gorias is there light.”

“But where’s—?” said Roland.

“The darkness grew,” said Malebron. “It is always there. We did not watch, and the power of night closed on Elidor. We had so much of ease that we did not mark the signs – a crop blighted, a spring failed, a man killed. Then it was too late – war, and siege, and betrayal, and the dying of the light.”

“Where’s Helen?” said Roland.

Malebron was silent, then he said quietly, “A maimed king and a mumbling boy! Is it possible?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Roland. “Where’s Helen? That’s her glove, and the thumb’s stuck in the rock.”

“Gloves!” cried Malebron. “Look about you! I have endured, and killed, only in the belief that you would come. And you have come. But you will not speak to me of gloves! You will save this land! You will bring back light to Elidor!”

“Me!”

“There is no hope but you.”

“Me,” said Roland. “I’m no use. What could I do?”

“Nothing,” said Malebron, “without me. And without you, I shall not live. Alone, we are lost: together, we shall bring the morning.”

“All this,” said Roland, “was like the golden castle – like you sang? The whole country?”

“All,” said Malebron.

“—Me?”

“You.”

Findias… Falias… Murias… Gorias. The Hazel of Fordruim… the Forest of Mondrum… the Hill of Usna. Men who walked like sunlight. Cloth of gold. Elidor. – Elidor.

Roland thought of the gravel against his cheek. This is true: now: I’m here. And only I can do it. He says so. He says I can bring it all back. Roland Watson, Fog Lane, Manchester 20. What about that? Now what about that!

“How do you know I can?” said Roland.

“I have watched you prove your strength,” said Malebron. “Without that strength you would not have lived to stand here at the heart of the darkness.”

“Here?” said Roland. “It’s just a hill—”

“It is the Mound of Vandwy,” said Malebron. “Night’s dungeon in Elidor. It has tried to destroy you. If you had not been strong you would never have left the stone circle. But you were strong, and I had to watch you prove your strength.”

“I don’t see how a hill can do all this,” said Roland. “You can’t fight a hill.”

“No,” said Malebron. “We fight our own people. Darkness needs no shape. It uses. It possesses. This Mound and its stones are from an age long past, yet they were built for blood, and were supple to evil.”

Roland felt cold and small on the hill.

“I’ve got to find the others first,” he said.

“It is the same thing,” said Malebron.

“No, but they’ll be better than me: they’re older. And I’ve got to find them, anyway.”

“It is the same thing,” said Malebron. “Listen. You have seen Elidor’s four castles. Now each castle was built to guard a Treasure, and each Treasure holds the light of Elidor. They are the seeds of flame from which all this land was grown. But Findias and Falias and Murias are taken, and their Treasures lost.

“You are to save these Treasures. Only you can save them.”

“Where are they?” said Roland. “And you said there were four Treasures: so where’s the other?”

“I hold it,” said Malebron. “The Spear of Ildana from Gorias. Three castles lie wasted: three Treasures are in the Mound. Gorias stands. You will go to Vandwy, and you will bring back light to Elidor.”

CHAPTER 5

THE MOUND OF VANDWY

They were at the foot of the Mound.

“How do we get in?” said Roland.

“Through the door.”

“What door? It’s just turf.”

“That is why you are here,” said Malebron. “The door is hidden, but you can find it.”

“How?” said Roland.

“Make the door appear: think it: force it with your mind. The power you know fleetingly in your world is here as real as swords. We have nothing like it. Now close your eyes. Can you still see the Mound in your thought?”

“Yes.”

“There is a door in the Mound,” said Malebron. “A door.”

“What kind of door?” said Roland.

“It does not matter. Any door. The door you know best. Think of the feel of it. The sound of it. A door. The door. The only door. It must come. Make it come.”

Roland thought of the door at the new house. He saw the blisters in the paint, and the brass flap with ‘Letters’ outlined in dry metal polish. He had been cleaning it only yesterday. It was a queer door to be stuck in the side of a hill.

“I can see it.”

“Is it there? Is it firm? Could you touch it?” said Malebron.

“I think so,” said Roland.

“Then open your eyes. It is still there.”

“No. It’s just a hill.”

“It is still there!” cried Malebron. “It is real! You have made it with your mind! Your mind is real! You can see the door!”

Roland shut his eyes again. The door had a brick porch, and there was a house leek growing on the stone roof. His eyes were so tightly closed that he began to see coloured lights floating behind his lids, and they were all shaped like the porch entrance. There was no need to think of it now – he could see nothing else but these miniature, drifting arches: and behind them all, unmoving, the true porch, square-cut, solid.

“The Mound must break! It cannot hide the door!”

“Yes,” said Roland. “It’s there. The door. It’s real.”

“Then look! Now!”

Roland opened his eyes, and he saw the frame of the porch stamped in the turf, ghostly on the black hill. And as he looked the frame quivered, and without really changing, became another door; pale as moonlight, grey as ashwood; low; a square, stone dolmen arch made of three slabs – two uprights and a lintel. Below it was a step carved with spiral patterns that seemed to revolve without moving. Light spread from the doorway to Roland’s feet.

“The door will be open as long as you hold it in your memory,” said Malebron.

“Aren’t you coming?” said Roland.

“No. That light is death in Elidor. It will not harm you, but be ready. We have word of something merciless here, though we do not know what it is.”

Beyond the dolmen arch a straight and level passage went into the hill.

“You will wait?” said Roland.

“I shall wait.”

“I’m frightened.”

The idea of stooping into that narrow opening in the ground choked his breath. He would be hemmed in by rock, the walls leaned, and there would be earth piled over his head, earth on top of him, pressing him down, crushing him. The walls would crush him. He tasted clay in his mouth.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t go in. Take me back. It’s nothing to do with me. It’s your world, and it’s all dead.”

“No!” said Malebron. “Gorias lives!”

But the golden castle was shrouded in Roland’s mind, and its flames were too far away to warm the pallor of the Mound.

“Find someone else! Not me! It’s nothing to do with me!”

“It is,” said Malebron. “Our worlds are different, but they are linked in subtle ways, and the death of Elidor would not be without its echo in your world.”

“I don’t care! It’s nothing to do with me!”

“It is,” said Malebron. His voice was hard. “Your sister and your brothers are in the Mound.”

Roland saw the glove lying, free now, below the grey spirals.

“They went, each in their turn,” said Malebron. “Time is different here.”

“What’s happened to them?” said Roland.

“They have failed. But you are stronger than any of them.”

“I’m not.”

“Here, in Elidor, you are stronger.”

“Do you mean that?” said Roland.

“Much stronger. You will go.”

“Yes,” said Roland. Now that there was no choice, the panic left him.

“Take this spear,” said Malebron. “The last Treasure for the last chance. It will give comfort beyond the temper of its blade.”

Roland held the spear. Fires moved deep in the metal, and its edge was a rainbow.

“What are the other Treasures?” said Roland.

“A sword, a cauldron, and a stone. Except these, trust nothing. And do not think twice to use the spear: for little you may meet in Vandwy can be good.”

The light in the Mound was white and soft, and appeared to come from nowhere, which made the passage indistinct, without texture or shadows. There was nothing on which Roland could focus. Sometimes he felt that he was not moving; at others that he had travelled a long way – much further than was possible if he had gone straight into the Mound. When he looked back the doorway was lost in the thick light.

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