Elidor (Essential Modern Classics) Read online

  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

  I t 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

  T hey 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.

  And he became aware of a sound; or rather the memory of a sound. It was not loud enough for him to hear, but he kept shaking his head to break the rhythm of five or six notes, many times repeated, like drops of water. And he noticed small changes in the fabric of the light, less than the shimmering of silk, but they were keeping time with this pure, soulless beauty that he could not hear.

  And still the passage continued. Roland was worried now. Something was wrong, or he had lost all his sense of bearing.

  “Where’s the end?” he said aloud, more to hear his voice than to ask a question. But then he stopped. As he had spoken the words there had been a brief flaw in the light, a blemish that was gone the moment it came.

  “The end of the tunnel,” said Roland.

  It came again; a triangle of light, within the light; an arch.

  “The – end – of – the – tunnel.”

  Roland hung on to the thought with all his will, and again the arch appeared, more fixed now.

  “Stay – there.”

  He could breathe without its trembling, and as he moved it drew nearer, and was rooted in stone, and he came out into a round chamber shaped like a beehive.

  “Helen!”

  She was sitting with David and Nicholas on the floor of the chamber, and all three were staring upwards.

  “Touch it, Roland,” said Nicholas. “Listen to it.”

  “It’s the loveliest sound,” said Helen.

  “I want to hear it again,” said David.

  Their voices were without tone or feeling.

&nb
sp; Roland looked up.

  It was the most delicate, the most wonderful thing he had ever seen.

  A thread hung from the dome, and at the end of it was a branch of apple blossom. The branch was silver, and the blossom of crystal. The veins in the leaves and petals were like spun mercury.

  “It’s beautiful!” said Roland.

  “Touch the flowers, Roland.”

  “They make music when you touch them.”

  “The loveliest music.”

  “It’s beautiful!” said Roland.

  “Touch them.”

  “The flowers.”

  “Touch.”

  The branch was so still that it seemed to move under Roland’s gaze, and there was a fragrance of sound all about him, a music that he could not quite hear, a fading harmony of petals.

  “Touch them, Roland.”

  If he touched them they would sing, and the music would be unlocked from the crystal, and he would hear…

  “Touch.”

  If he could reach them. The branch was coming nearer. If he stood on tiptoe, and stretched upwards with his spear.

  But as Roland lifted the spear flecks of yellow light crackled round its head, and he pulled back his arm, tingling with shock.

  “Touch the flowers, Roland.”

  “You touch them!” said Roland. “Why don’t you? You can’t!”

  He looked up again. The branch was dropping towards him on its thread like a spider.

  “I’ll touch them!” cried Roland, and he swung the spear.

  The air burst round him as discords of sound that crashed from wall to wall, and died away, and everything went black. Helen screamed, but it was Helen, and not a mindless voice.

  “Where are you?” said Nicholas.

  “There’s a light,” said David.

  “It’s my spear,” said Roland. “I’ll hold it up. Are you hurt?”

  “We’re OK,” said Nicholas. They all made towards the spear, and crouched together round it. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re in the hill,” said Roland. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Hill?” said David. “Yes – the Treasures. And Malebron. But there was light—”