Elidor (Essential Modern Classics) (4 page)

T
HE
M
OUND OF
V
ANDWY

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.

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—”

“I smashed the apple branch.”

“An apple branch – I looked at it. I touched it – I – can’t remember.”

“The Treasures,” said Roland. “Did you find the Treasures?”

“No.”

“What’s that?” said Helen. “Over there.”

“And there,” said David. “And on the other side, too.”

They were growing used to the spear light, and they could just make out the wall of the rock chamber. There were four arches in it. One was black, the passage mouth: but the others shone faintly.

“I’ll keep a look out here,” said Roland. “You go and see what they are.”

“This one’s a small room,” said Helen.

“So’s this—”

Shadows flapped in the chamber like bats as the children stooped through the arches. And for a time all was silence. Roland stood alone by the entrance to the passage, holding the spear upright on the floor. Then the shadows began to move again, and towards him from the archways, slowly and without a word, the other three came and the darkness shrank before them.

In David’s hand was a naked sword. The blade was like ice, and the hilt all jewels and fire.

Nicholas held a stone, golden, that seemed to be burning inside.

And Helen was carrying a bowl – a cauldron, with pearls about the rim. And as she walked, light splashed and ran through her fingers like water.

T
HE
L
AY OF THE
S
TARVED
F
OOL

“B
ut how did we come through from the church to the castle?” said David.

The children sat by Malebron on the ridge, clear of the hill. The dolmen arch was drab with lichen, and the stones of the avenue heeled like twisted palings. Clouds still rolled upon the plain, but there was a quickening in the air, and Findias, Falias, and Murias were etched in gold, as though they stood before the dawn.

“It is not easy to cross from your world into this,” said Malebron, “but there are places where they touch. The church, and the castle. They were battered by war, and now all the land around quakes with destruction. They have been shaken loose in their worlds.”

“But the fiddle: and the noise – what was that?” said Roland.

“All things have their note, and will answer to it.”

“You mean, like a wine glass ringing?”

“Yes,” said Malebron. “And when the church answered, it existed in both places at once – the real
church, and the echo of itself. Yet more than echo, for although you opened the door here, no door opened in your world.”

“Can you always do this?” said Helen.

“No. The finding is chance. Wasteland and boundaries: places that are neither one thing nor the other, neither here nor there – these are the gates of Elidor.”

“Isn’t it funny how things happen?” said Roland. “You know: if we hadn’t gone into Manchester today, and if we hadn’t played that game with the map, and if the demolition gang hadn’t had a tea-break – all these little things happening at just the right time – all ending like this.”

The children looked at the four Treasures, sword, stone, spear, and cauldron, glowing in their hands.

“One each,” said David.

“Yes,” said Malebron. And he took the fiddle and bow from under his cloak. They were slung on a cord across his shoulder, and there was also a pouch fastened to the cord. He opened it, and took out an oblong package, and began to unwrap layer after layer of very thin oiled cloth. He smoothed each layer, and put it aside, before peeling off the next.

It was an old book, made of vellum. The leaves were hard, glossy, and crimped with age. Malebron opened the book and held it out for the children to see.

Nothing that had yet happened to Roland compared with the shock of this moment.

He was looking at a page of script written in a language that was unknown to him. And at the top of the page was a picture of himself, with Helen, Nicholas, and David by his side. The figures were stiff and puppet-like, and everything was out of scale, but there was no mistaking them. They stood close together, cradling the Treasures in their arms, their heads tilted to one side, a blank expression on their faces, their toes pointing downwards. Next to them was a round hill with a dolmen in its side, and by it another figure, smaller than the children: Malebron. His arms were spread wide, and he held the fiddle in one hand and the bow in the other.

“We’ve even got the right Treasures,” said Roland. For in the picture he had a spear; and David, the sword: Helen, the cauldron; Nicholas, the stone.

Malebron put his finger on the script, and read:

    
“And they shall come from the waves
.

    
And the Glory of Elidor shall pass with them
.

    
And the Darkness shall not fade
.

    
Unless there is heard the Song of Findhorn
.

    Who walks in the High Places.”

“But who wrote it?” said David. “And how did he know?”

“This book was written so long ago,” said Malebron, “that we have only legend to tell us about it.

“The legend says that there was once a ploughboy in Elidor: an idiot, given to fits. But in his fit he spoke clearly, and was thought to prophesy. And he became so famous that he was taken into the king’s household, where he swore that he would starve among plenty, and so it happened: for he was locked in a pantry, and died there.

“However it was, his prophecies were written in this book, which is called
The Lay of the Starved Fool
.

“Through the years it has been read only for its nonsense. But when the prophecies started to be fulfilled, when the first darkness crept into Elidor, I saw in
The Lay of the Starved Fool
not nonsense, but the confused fragments of a dream: a dream that no sane man could bear to dream: a waking memory of what was to be.

“Since then I have worked to discover the truth hidden in the Lay, because, you see, I knew nothing of what I have just told you about our two worlds. I have had to find out that for myself by trial and thought, by asking all the time: how is this true, and if it is true, how can it be?

“Do you understand, then, what it was to find the note that made the church answer, to watch Findias dissolve, to
step through into your world, and to see you whom I have known for so long running towards me across the broken land?”

“It’s as if everything that’s ever happened was leading up to this,” said Roland. “You can’t say how far back it started: everything working together: like cog wheels. When I spun the street names they had to stop at that one place—”

That had been the moment when he had felt that he was being watched.

“Remember, I have said the worlds are linked,” said Malebron. “And what you have done here will be reflected in some way, at some time, in your world.”

“Wait a minute,” said Roland. “Will you read us that bit out of the book again?”

    
“And they shall come from the waves
.

    
And the Glory of Elidor shall pass with them
.

    
And the Darkness shall not fade
.

    
Unless there is heard the Song of Findhorn
.

    
Who walks in the High Places.”

“We’ve been going on as though we’ve saved Elidor, and now that you’ve found the Treasures you’ll be all right,” said Roland. “But doesn’t the book mean that things’ll be worse, not better?”

“It does,” said Malebron. “We are not at the end but at the beginning. But with the Treasures we may hold Gorias, and from there win back to the other castles. Then we shall have four islands in the darkness, and some of us may yet see Mondrum green.”

“But who’s Findhorn?” said Roland.

“No one knows,” said Malebron. “There are desolate mountains far to the north, at the edge of the world, where in the old days it was thought that demons lived. I think these are the High Places. But Findhorn and the Song are forgotten, and now that the Treasures are safe I can go to look for him there. I have proved the wisdom of the Starved Fool now, and that gives me the courage to prove it once again.”

They climbed down from the ridge into Mondrum, and made their way back towards Findias through the slime. The journey seemed much shorter to Roland than when he had been alone, or perhaps it was because Malebron knew where he was going and led them straight there.

The Treasures surrounded them in a field of colour which moved with them, so that as they came to a tree it would change from grey, to purple, to the livid colours of decay, and then sink back into the dead light when they had passed by.

They saw nothing of Findias until they reached the
open ground below the forest half a mile from the castle, and at this distance the golden outline did not show. But the ruins were clear in detail, as though the children and Malebron were looking at them through a hole in a dirty window pane.

When they were nearly at the drawbridge, Roland turned for a last sight of Elidor.

“Malebron? Something’s happened – on the ridge.”

They could just see the ridge above the trees, and the squat cone of Vandwy, with the avenue leading from it. The standing stones of the avenue, which they had left in disorder, were now upright, sharp, harsh, and menacing. And as they watched, a dark beam like a black searchlight leapt from the Mound.

“Run!” shouted Malebron. “I have been too proud, and Vandwy has recovered from its wound!”

The beam circled, sweeping land and sky, and before the children reached the drawbridge it caught them, and locked on to them beyond escape.

The air was as thick as water. It dragged about their limbs and clogged their lungs, and was shot through with strands of blackness which their hands could not feel or push aside, but each strand plucked at their minds like wire as they blundered through.

“Think of suns!—Meadows, and bright flowers!—Think!—Do not let night into your minds!”

Malebron walked beside the children, urging, driving them on. He moved freely, untouched by the dark.

“Your strength is your weakness now! Vandwy has sent Fear to be given shape by you! These shapes will be real, as the door was real! Keep them out!”

But the fear was in the children: a numbness that sapped the will. And soon they began to hear in the forest the pursuit that they themselves were making.

Slowly they crossed the bridge. But those few yards were longer than the whole journey. The children’s vision was so blighted by the strands that they saw the bridge shoot out like a pier over the sea, and the castle was a speck where the lines of the planks converged in the distance.

The bridge became higher and narrower: and then it was tilted to the left: and then to the right: and then upwards, so that they could not walk: and then down, so that they were on a wooden precipice and dared not move: and then the bridge swung completely over, and they felt that they would drop off into the sky. And all the time Malebron fought for their minds.

“The – bridge – is – safe! You – will – not – stop! Think! Move!”

They reached the gatehouse. And as they laboured through to the courtyard there bounded from the forest something that was on two legs but was not a man, and behind it the trees ran howling.

The children fell into the courtyard, and the grip of Vandwy slackened.

“Take the Treasures!” said Malebron.

“No! You need them!”

“We are trapped. Take them to your world and guard them there. They will be safe. And while they are free their light will not die in Elidor, and we may live.”

“Come with us!” said Helen.

“I cannot. I must seal the gate. Nothing must follow you through the keep: stand well clear on the other side.”

“What shall we do with the Treasures?” said Roland.

“No more than guard them. And if we fail here, the
light of Elidor may live on, and kindle again in other worlds.”

Malebron put the fiddle to his shoulder and began to play: faster and faster, until the notes merged and drove through the children, cutting the darkness from their minds, snapping the threads of Vandwy with the pain. The keep picked up the fiddle’s note, and the surface of the stone lost its hardness, rippled like skin.

“Now go!” cried Malebron. “Go!”

The ramparts by the gatehouse bristled with silhouettes.

“Malebron!”

“Go!”

The children staggered through the doorway of the keep. The ground shook so much that they could hardly stand: their teeth burred in their heads, the walls were a fog of sound, plaster came like snow from the ceiling. A gap appeared in front of them, and they pulled and pushed each other towards it and between two floorboards that were nailed across the gap, and ran, choking, out on to the wasteland of Thursday Street.

The fiddle note held. Each brick in the derelict church was grinding against the next. Mortar dust spouted from the joints.

“Look out!” Nicholas yelled. “It’s going!”

All the sounds rose together to one unbearable pitch,
the wall bellied outwards, and the church fell in a groaning roar of destruction.

“Roland! The Treasures! What’s happened to them?”

But Roland was gazing at the tangled ruin of the church, and could not answer.

“It’s all right,” he said at last. “It’s all right. We’ll be able to hide them now.”

The children stood before the rubble as the dust cleared. It was late afternoon. A long way off, a woman pushed a pram.