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.
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.