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.
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