He pressed one hand on Simon's shoulder, and glanced up at Jane, beckoning her closer. Then he stood up. Jane put a diffident arm round Simon's shoulder, to help as he turned to watch.

 

John Rowlands was standing close by on the beach, drip- ping from head and clothes. Jane said in Simon's ear, 'He jumped in the sea after you, trying to reach you, when -' her voice seemed to dry into nothing; she swallowed - 'when Great-Uncle Merry just... just came up, out of nowhere.'

 

Merriman loomed before them, angular in his wetness, tall as a tree. Before him on the beach, the men of the shipyard stood motionless in a group, with the two grey-whiskered captains angry and silent nearby. Caradog Lewis stood in the midst of the shipwrights, red hair: gleaming. He was staring at Merriman transfixed, like some small animal caught in mid-stride by an angry badger or a fox.

 

And the anger in Merriman's eyes as he looked at the red-haired man was of such depth that both Simon and Jane, watching, shrank from it. Caradog Lewis moved slowly back, cringing, seeking escape. Then Merriman reached out one arm with the first finger stiff, pointing, and the man froze, pinned into stillness once more.

 

'Go,' Merriman said softly, in his deep voice like black velvet. 'Go, you who have sold yourself to the Dark, back from this bright Aberdyfi of the river to Dinas Mawddwy where you came from. Go back to where the Dark lurks in the hills round Cader Idris in the realm of the Grey King, where others wait in black hope like yourself. But remember that since you have failed in this attempt here, your masters now will have no time for you. So beware after this, in years to come, that you keep your sons and your daughters, and the sons of your daughters, away from any trifling with the Dark. For the Dark in its vengefulness will surely destroy any one of them that it can take into its power.'

 

Without a word Caradog Lewis turned and walked away over the crackling grey slate, up the rough steps and away along the road, until they could no longer see him. Merriman looked at Simon and Jane; then he turned towards the sea, past the silent men and the shipyard huts and the half-built ship, and in a strange gentle gesture he opened his arms wide, like a man stretched on waking, looking up at the sky.

 

And out of nowhere a seagull came swooping past, low over the water, harshly crying. Their eyes followed it ... followed ...

 

... and when it rose again out of sight suddenly they found that they were dressed once more in the jeans and shirts of their own time, standing on a narrow slatey beach a few feet below the level of the iron-railed pavement, alone with John Rowlands and Merriman. In Simon's right hand was a piece of flat slate; his first finger was curled round it as if for throwing. He looked down at it, shrugged, bent, and skimmed it over the surface of the water. It bounced impressively in a long skipping trail.

 

'Eight!' Simon said.

 

'You always win,' said Jane.

 

Their clothes were dry; only Jane's hair was damp still, from the rains of the morning. There was nothing to show that Simon, Merriman and John Rowlands had ever been in the sea. Jane peeped at John Rowlands as he stood there blinking in perplexity, and she knew that he did not remember anything. He looked about, dazed; then he caught sight of Merriman and became very still. He stared at him for a long moment.

 

'Daro,' he said at last, huskily. 'What is this? You. You! I have never forgotten you, from when I was a boy. Do you remember? Is it you?'

 

Jane and Simon stood listening, puzzled.

 

'You were Will's age then,' said Merriman, looking at him with half a smile. 'Up on your mountain. And you saw me ... riding.'

 

John Rowlands said slowly, 'Riding on the wind.'

 

'Riding on the wind. I wondered, after that, if you would remember. There was no harm in it, if you did - who would have believed you? But I put it into your mind that you had dreamed it, to leave you at rest.'

 

'And indeed I did think that I had dreamed it, until this moment that I see the same face again, unchanged after so long. And wonder why it is here.' John Rowlands turned his head and looked at Simon and Jane. 'This is Will's master, is it not? And known to you as well.'

 

Simon said automatically, 'Great-Uncle Merry.'

 

John Rowlands' voice rose, incredulous. 'Your great-uncle?'

 

'A name,' Merriman said. His eyes clouded; he looked away over the estuary at the sea. 'I must go. Will needs me. As the Dark knew, Simon, when it caught you in peril in a time from which only I could ransom you, by leaving the place where I was.'

 

'Are they all right?' Simon said.

 

"They will be, if all goes well.*

 

Jane said anxiously, 'What can we do?'

 

'Be on the beach at sunrise. Your beach,' Merriman said. He looked at her with an odd strained smile, and pointed up the road. 'And take your small brother home to tea.'

 

Turning, they saw Barney's yellow-haired figure prancing towards them down the road, with Blodwen Rowlands in his wake; and when they turned back again to the beach and the sea, Merriman was not there.

 

 

 

Part Three: The Lost Land

The City

 

Down through the bright haze the strange road brought them, arching like a rainbow. Will and Bran found that they made no move of their own. Once they had stepped on to its surface, the road took them up, took them through space and through time with a motion they could not afterwards describe. Then out of that brightness they were down in the Lost Land, and the road was gone, and all else vanished from their minds as they looked up at the place where they were.

 

They stood high up, on a golden roof, behind a low lattice of wrought gold. Behind them, and at either side, stretched the roofs of a great city, gleaming, spires and towers and turrets crowding the skyline, some golden as the place where they stood, some dark as black flint. The city was very quiet. This seemed to be early morning, cool and silent. Before them, as far as they could see, a luminous white mist lapped round the broad-topped trees of a park. Dew glistened on the trees. Somewhere, beyond the park, the sun was rising into a haze of cloud.

 

Will gazed out at the trees. They were not packed close together in the random clusters of the wild, but well-spaced, each broad and proud and full; they rose out of the mist like glimmering green islands in a grey-white sea. He saw oak and beech and chestnut and elm; the shapes were as familiar as the buildings around him were strange.

 

Bran said softly, at his side, 'Look!'

 

He was pointing past Will's back. Turning, Will saw among the peaks and ridges of the roofs a great golden dome, topped with a gold arrow pointing westward to the blue horizon-line of the sea. The sides of the dome caught the early sun, glittering; he realised that they were banded, up and down, with panels of crystal running between strips of gold.

 

Bran peered, cupping his hands around his smoky glasses. 'Is it a church?'

 

'Could be. Looks a bit like St Paul's.'

 

'Or one of those Arab whatsits. Mosques.'

 

They spoke in whispers, by instinct. The place was so quiet. Nothing anywhere broke the silence of the city, except once, for a few seconds, somewhere far off among the tops of the trees, a seagull's plaintive cry.

 

Will looked down at his feet. The roof on which they stood seemed to enclose them, its latticework of wrought gold stretching all round like a fence. He reached out. The top bar would not move. It was perhaps half his height; he thought of climbing over, but changed his mind at the sight of the sheer drop, twenty feet down to the next roof, on the other side.

 

Bran too reached out and took hold of the lattice in front of him; then suddenly he gasped. Beneath his touch, the whole criss-cross panel moved; swung free, balanced on a lower bar, then dropped down from his hands over the edge of the roof, lengthening in hinged sections as it fell, like a folded ladder opening.

 

'Clang!... clang!... clang!... clang!' The metallic sounds rang out over the roofs, cracking the silence, ending in a resonant crash as the final section of the ladder-like golden framework hit the roof below. All over the silent city the echoes rose like birds.

 

Will and Bran stared about them, watching for movement, for the waking of someone, somewhere, that such a clattering must surely bring. But there was nothing.

 

'Dozy place, isn't it?' said Bran, a small shake in his voice beneath the bravado; and with Will following close after, he swung himself over the edge and clambered down the ladder of gold. They stood now on a broad lower roof, slanting more gently downward, crossed with raised strips of some darker metal that served as ridges down which they could walk. At the bottom edge of this roof, expecting to find themselves over a perpendicular wall, they found instead a great sweeping stairway of grey stone, with the glitter of granite, stretching down from the very rim of the roof, far down into the mist and the trees.

 

Together they ran down the steps, keeping close, and as they ran, the mist below them faded into nothing, falling back so that the trees stood clear over a sweep of green grass. And they saw at the bottom of the stone steps, waiting, two horses standing saddled and bridled; untethered, with the reins laid loose over their necks. They were beautiful gleaming animals, lion-coloured, their long manes and tails yellow-white against the golden hide. The bits between their teeth, and their stirrups, were of silver, and the reins were red plaited silk. Will went up to the first and laid a wondering hand on its neck, and the horse blew softly through its nose and ducked its head as if inviting him to mount.

 

Bran said, gazing bemused at the horses, 'Can you ride, Will?'

 

'Not really,' Will said. 'But I don't think that will matter.' And he put one foot in the horse's stirrup and without sound or effort he was up on its back, smiling down, gathering up the reins. The second horse pawed the ground, and nudged gently at Bran's shoulder with its nose.

 

'Come on. Bran,' Will said. 'They've been waiting for us.' He sat there, self-possessed as a huntsman, a small stocky figure in blue jeans and sweater on the tall golden horse, and Bran shook his head in wonder and reached for the saddle-bow. He was up, mounted, before he had a chance to think about it. The horse tossed its head and Bran caught the reins as they fell towards him.

 

'All right,' said Will gently to his horse, stroking its white mane. 'Take us where we should go. Please?' And the two horses moved off together, unhurried, confident, walking the stone-paved street at the base of the long sweep of rising stone steps.

 

The trees of the broad green park towered over them at one side, shading the road, lush and dew-flecked and cool. Sun-light lay on the grass between them in bright pools, but there was no sound. No birds sang. Only the clop-clop of the horses' hooves rang through the quiet city, changing to a hollower, deeper sound as the two golden horses turned abruptly away from the park and into a narrow side street. Great grey walls loomed up on either side, huge blank expanses of grey stone, without a window anywhere.

 

The street grew narrower, darker. Without altering their steady pace the horses went on between the towering walls, while Will and Bran sat loosely holding the reins and glancing nervously about.

 

They turned a corner. Still the high blank walls enclosed them, in a narrow alley, with the sky no more than a thin blue strip overhead. But this time they could see a small wooden door set into the wall at their right, and when they drew level with this door both animals stopped, and began tossing their heads and pawing at the ground. Will's horse shook its head from side to side, so that the silver harness musically rang and the long mane rippled and flowed like white-gold silk.

 

'All right,' Will said. He dismounted; so did Bran. As soon as their riders were on the ground, the two horses turned without hurry in a brief confusion of clopping hooves and jingling harness, and together they trotted up the alley, back the way that they had come. Their bright loose tails swung like torches in the shadowy street.

 

'Beautiful!' Bran said softly, watching the golden shapes disappear.

 

Will was standing before the door, studying its plain wooden surface. It was dark and pitted as if by age. Absently he thrust his thumbs into his leather belt, and one of them met the curve of the small brass horn that he had blown on the mountain, in another life and another world. Unhooking the horn from his belt, he held it towards Bran.

 

'We've got to stay dose together, whatever happens. You keep hold of one side of this and I'll take the other. That'll help.'

 

Bran nodded his white head and slipped the fingers of his left hand through the single loop of the horn. Will looked again at the door. It had no handle, no bell, no lock or key-hole; no means at all of opening it that he could see.

 

He raised one hand and knocked, firmly.

 

The door swung outward. There was no one on the other side. Peering, they could see nothing within but darkness. Each gripping one side of the little hunting-horn as if it were a lifebelt, they went in, and behind them the door swung shut.

 

A glimmer of light from somewhere, untraceable, showed them they were in a narrow corridor, low-roofed, ending a few yards ahead where a ladder rose upwards out of sight.

 

Will said slowly, 'I suppose we go up there.'

 

'Is that safe?' Bran's voice was husky with uncertainty.

 

'Well, it's all we can do, isn't it? And somehow nothing seems to be telling me not to. You know?'

 

"That's true. It doesn't feel... bad. Mind you it doesn't feel too good either.'

 

Will laughed softly. 'That's going to be the same everywhere here. The Dark has no power in this land, I think - but nor does the Light.'

 

'Then who has?'

 

'I suppose we shall find that out.' Will took a firm grip on the horn. 'Keep hold. Even if it'll be awkward climbing up there.'

 

They went up the broad-runged ladder, one close after the other, still linked by their talisman, and emerged into an area so totally unexpected that for a few moments they both stood there motionless, looking. They had come up through an open trapdoor, close to one end of a long gallery. The floor stretched before them in curious sections, one after the other, on differing levels, so that one might be higher than the one before, and the next lower than either. The place seemed to be a kind of library. Heavy square tables and chairs filled it, separated by low stacks of bookshelves, and the wall on their left was covered entirely with books. The ceiling was wood-panelled. The right-hand wall was not there.

 

Will stared, but could not understand. At his right, in this long room, a kind of carved wooden balustrade ran all the length of the floor. But no wall was beyond it, nor anything else visible: only blackness. Blank dark. There was no sense of an emptiness, or a perilous void. There was simply nothing.

 

Then he saw movement in the room. The first people they had seen in this land were appearing, through a door at the far end of the long gallery; drifting, singly, men and women of all ages, dressed in a variety of simple clothes that seemed to belong to no particular age. There were not many of them. One by one, each figure silently settled, collecting a pile of books from the shelves and sitting down with them at a table, or standing browsing over a single book. Not one of them paid the smallest attention to Will or Bran. One man came up close beside them and stood frowning at the shelves lining the wall at their backs.

 

Will said to him, greatly daring, 'Can't you find it?' But the man made no sign of noticing. His face lightened suddenly; he reached out and took a book, and went back with it to sit down at a table nearby. Will peered at the title of the book as he went past, but it was written on the cover in a language he could not understand. And when the man opened the book, its pages were quite blank.

 

Bran said slowly, "They can't see us.'

 

'No. Nor hear us. Come on.'

 

They walked carefully together up the long gallery, skirting intent seated figures, cautious not to trip or nudge. Nobody gave any flicker of notice as they passed. And whenever they looked down at a book that a man or woman was reading, they found that its pages seemed to bear no writing at all.

 

There was no real door at the far end of the gallery, but instead an opening in the panelled wall, from which a strange corridor led. This too was entirely panelled in wood; it was more like a square tunnel than a corridor, slanting down at a steep angle, turning comers in a zig-zag pattern, to and fro. Bran followed Will without question; he said only, once, with sudden helpless force, "This place doesn't mean anything.'

 

'It will, when we arrive,' Will said.

 

'Arrive at what?'

 

'Well - at the meaning! At the crystal sword...'

 

'Look! What's that?'

 

Bran had stopped, head up, wary. Ahead of them as they turned a comer, the last section of the zig-zag slope was white and glaring, filled with strong light blazing in from whatever lay beyond. For an instant Will had a dreadful sense that they were descending into some great pit of fire. But this was a cold light, fierce without brilliance. He turned the last comer, stepping into the full light, and a strong resonant voice said ahead of him out of the brightness, 'Welcome!'

 

A great empty expanse of floor stretched before them, its walls lost in shadow, its roof too high to be seen. In the middle of the space stood a single figure, dressed all in black. He was a smallish man, not much taller than themselves, with a strong-featured face creased by humour at the eyes and mouth, though with no sign of a smile now. The hair of his head was grey, tight-curled as a mat, and he had a neat, crisp curling grey beard with a curious dark line down the centre like a stripe. He spread both arms and turned a little, as it offering them the space around him. 'Welcome,' he said again. 'Welcome to the City.' They stood together before him. Bran took a step forward, letting go the horn. He said, 'Is there only the City, in the Lost Land?'

 

'No,' the man said. 'There is the City, and the Country, and the Castle. And you shall see all of them, but first you must tell us why you have come.' His voice was warm and ringing, but there was still wariness in it, and still he did not smile. He was looking at Will. 'Why have you come?' he said again. Tell us.'

 

As he spoke he made a small motion with one open hand towards the space before him. Will looked, and gasped. His head sang with shock; all at once he was very cold.

 

Out there, in a vast space that had been darkness a second before, stretched a huge crowd of blank upturned faces, row upon row, thousands of people. In tiers, in endless galleries they sat, staring at him. Their awareness pressed down on him like an unbearable weight, paralysing his mind; it was like facing the whole world.

 

Will clenched his fists, and felt the cool metal of the hunting-horn still against his fingers. Taking a deep slow breath, he said in a loud clear voice, 'We have come for the crystal sword.'

 

And they laughed.

 

It was not tolerant, friendly laughter; it was horrible. A deep roar rose from the vast audience there, swelling like long thunder, mocking, jeering, breaking over him in a wave of contempt. He could see individuals, pointing, mouths wide with scornful mirth. The ocean of their loud mockery engulfed him so that he trembled, and knew himself to be small, insignificant, dwindling down ...

 

Bran's voice, beside him, shouted furiously into the uproar, 'We have come for Eirias'

 

All sound vanished, as totally as if someone had turned a switch. In an instant, all the jeering faces were gone.

 

Will drooped suddenly, hearing his tight-held breath go out in a small weak gasp. Bran said again, wonderingly, to himself, 'We have come for... Eirias.' He seemed to be tasting the name.

 

The man with the grey beard said softly, 'You have, indeed.' He stepped forward, hands outspread. Taking each of them by the shoulder he turned them to face the black emptiness where the endless rows of faces had been.

 

He said, "There is nobody there. No one, nothing. Nothing but space. They were all... an appearance. But look up. Look up, behind you. And there you shall see -'

 

Automatically they turned; and stood, staring. Over their heads, like a balcony suspended in the air, was the bright-lit gallery through which they had walked among the unheeding reading people. Everything was there, the books, the shelves, the heavy tables. The readers still moved idly to and fro, or stood gazing at the shelves. And the space through which they were looking into the room was the fourth wall which had seemed not to be there.

 

Will said, 'This place is a theatre come to life.'

 

The man fingered the point of his beard, pushing it forward with one finger. 'All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves ...' He laughed gently. 'Some players would say that is the best kind of theatre there can be.'

 

Bran smiled in response, a small rueful smile. But Will was still listening to a single word echoing inside his head. He said to Bran, 'Eirias?'

 

'I didn't know,' Bran said. 'It just ... came. It's a Welsh word. It means a big fire, a blaze.'

 

'And the crystal sword blazes indeed,' said the bearded man. 'Or so they tell, for few living have ever seen it, within memory here.'

 

'But we must find it,' Will said.

 

'Yes,' the man said. 'I know why you are here. When you are asked questions in this land, it is not for our want of the answers. I know who you are. Will Stanton, Bran Davies. Perhaps even better' - he looked hard for an instant at Bran - 'than you know yourselves. And as for me, you will know me soon. You may call me Gwion. And I shall show you the City.'

 

"The Lost Land,' Bran said, half to himself.

 

'Yes,' said the man called Gwion. He was a lean, neat figure in his black clothes; his beard glinted in the bright light from overhead. 'The Lost Land. And as I said to you, there lie within it the City, and the Country, and the Castle. And the Castle is where you must go, in the end, but you cannot get there except by way of the rest. So here you will begin, within the City, my City which I greatly love. You must take good note of it, for it is one of the wonders of the world that will not come again.'

 

He smiled at them, a brilliant sudden smile that lit his face with warmth and affection, and lit their own spirits simply by looking.

 

'See!' he said, swinging round, opening his arms to the back of the space that was like a stage. And the bright-lit gallery overhead disappeared, and the light grew diffuse, glowing all around, and suddenly they found they were in a great open city square. It was edged by pillared grey-white buildings gleaming in the sunlight, filled with people and music and the calls of traders at bright-coloured stalls, and the sparkle and splash of water flung high by fountains.

 

The sun was warm on their faces. Will felt delight rushing through him as if the blood in his veins were dancing, and he looked at Bran and saw the same joy shining in his face.

 

Laughing at them, Gwion drew them across the square, through the crowd, among the people of the Lost Land.

 

 

 

Part Three: The Lost Land

The Rose-Garden

 

Faces flashed round them like a kaleidoscope's shaken images. A child swung a handful of bright streamers before their eyes, laughing, and was gone; a hopeful flurry of green-necked pigeons swooped by. They passed a group of people dancing, where a tall man decked with red ribbons played the flute, a gay, catchy little tune; they stumbled, almost, at a place on the smooth grey paving, over a fragile crumpled-looking old man who was drawing with chalks on the ground. Will had a sudden startled glimpse of the picture, a great green tree on a rounded hill, with a bright light shining out of its branches, before the flute-player led the dancers past him in a flurry of music, and he was whirled away.

 

Gwion's bearded face was still there in the crowd, moving beside him. 'Stay close!' he called. But Will noticed now that no other eyes than Gwion's ever met their own in this crowd. The people all around seemed able to see him now, and glanced as they would glance at any other passerby, instead of turning a blind unwitting face to someone who was, for them, not there. Yet nobody properly looked at him, or at Bran; there was no recognition, no glimmer of the interest they showed in one another. He thought: we have come a little way along - we are here now, but only just. Perhaps they will really see us, later on, if we do well at whatever it is we are expected to do...

 

Laughter swelled in the crowded square, from a circle of grinning faces watching a juggler. Marvellous smells wafted past from stalls selling food. A fine spray caressed Will's face, and he saw the glittering drops of a fountain, tossed in a diamond stream up to the sun and down again. He saw Bran in front of him, pale face alight behind the dark lenses, laughing as he shouted something to Gwion. Then there was a stir in the crowd, heads turning; bodies pressed back against Will. He heard the hooves of horses, the jingling of harness, a creaking and a rumbling of wheels; through the heads of the crowd he could glimpse riders bobbing by, bareheaded, dressed in blue. The rumbling grew; he could see a coach now, its roof dark blue and splendidly curlicued in gold, and blue plumes tossing before it from the foreheads of tall midnight-black horses.

 

Hoof-beats slowed, wheels squeaked on the stone street; the coach stopped, rocking gently to and fro. Gwion was close again, drawing Will and Bran forward. The crowd parted easily, respectfully, each one making way instantly at the sight of Gwion's erect grey head. Then the coach was before them, suddenly enormous, like a shining blue ship swaying there on strong leather straps hung from a high-wheeled curved frame. A crest was engraved in gold on the glossy door, higher than Will's head. The black horses stamped and blew. There was no coachman to be seen.

 

Gwion opened the coach door and, reaching inside, swung down a step for mounting.

 

'Come, Will,' he said.

 

Will looked up, uncertain. Shadows hid the inside of the coach.

 

'No harm,' Gwion said. 'Trust your instinct. Old One.'

 

Will looked sharply, curiously, at the smile-creased eyes in the strong face. He said, 'Do you come too?'

 

'Not yet,' Gwion said. 'You and Bran, at first.'

 

He helped them up, and shut the door. Will sat looking out. Around Gwion the crowd eddied and chattered once more, beginning to resume its own affairs, patchwork-bright in the sunshine. The coach, inside, was cool and dim-lit, with deep padded benches, leather-smelling. A horse whinnied; hooves clattered, and the coach began to move.

 

Will sat back, looking at Bran. The white-haired boy pulled off his glasses and grinned at him.

 

'First horses, then a coach-and-four. What'll they offer us next, then? Think they'll have a Rolls-Royce?' But he was not listening to himself; he blinked at the buildings moving past the windows, and propped the dark glasses back on his nose.

 

'A great bird,' Will said softly. 'Or a griffon, or a basilisk.' He too looked out again at the brightness, moving with the jolting sway of the leather-slung coach. Few people were to be seen here. They were moving along a broad street lined by curving arcades of houses that seemed to him startlingly beautiful, with their clear lines and arched doors and wide-set, even windows, and walls of warm golden stone. It had never really occurred to him to think of buildings as beautiful before.

 

Bran said haltingly, speaking the same thought, 'It's such a ... well-made place.'

 

'Everything the right shape,' Will said.

 

That's right. I mean, look at that!' Bran leaned forward, pointing. Set among the houses was the high curving entrance to a magnificent pillared courtyard. But the coach had passed before they could see what lay inside.

 

The world seemed to dim a little; Will saw that the sun-light was gone. They sat swaying in the coach, hoof-beats loud in their ears. Still the light seemed to die.

 

Will frowned. 'Is it getting dark?'

 

'Must be clouds.' Bran stood, braced between seats, and gazed out, clutching the door. 'Yes, there are. Big grey clouds, up there. Looks like a real summer storm cooking up.' Then his voice rose a little. 'Will - there were riders dressed in blue in front of us, weren't there?'

 

"That's right. Like in a procession.'

 

*No one there now. Nothing ahead. But something ... following.'

 

The tightness in his voice brought Will jerking to his feet, to peer out past the white head. Outside their rocking small space the broad street had grown so murky now that it was hard to see clearly; a dark group of figures seemed to be moving behind them, keeping the same speed, coming a little closer perhaps. He thought he could hear other hoof-beats behind the clatter of their own. Then instinct struck at him and his hand tightened on the window-frame: something was coming, something back there, of which he should be afraid.

 

'What's the matter?' Bran said; and gasped, as a sudden lurch sent him sprawling back on to the seat of the coach. Will staggered back, dropping beside him. The noise of the coach grew, jingling, thundering; they were flung to and fro, from side to side, as the coach pitched and tossed like a boat on an angry sea.

 

Bran yelled, 'We're going too fast!'

 

'The horses are frightened!'

 

'What of?'

 

'Of ... of ... back there.' Words would not come; Will's throat was dry. Bran's white face danced before him; the Welsh boy had pulled off the sheltering glasses again in the gloom, and there was fear in his strange tawny eyes. Then the eyes widened; Bran clutched Will's arm.

 

Outside, a flurry of dark figures came whirling past, on either side; horses furiously galloping, manes and tails flying on the wind, and dark cloaks streaming out behind the figures of hooded men riding. Here and there one figure was white-cloaked among the dark mass. They saw no faces inside the hoods. Nothing but shadow. There was no telling whether any faces were there to be seen.

 

But one figure, taller, came galloping past to the window of the flying coach, swaying out there in the grey half-light. The head turned towards them. Will heard Bran's stifled gasp.

 

The head tossed, flicking back the side of the flowing hood. And there was a face: a face which Will recognised with dread as it stared at him, filled with hatred and malevolence, bright blue eyes burning into his own. Will heard a husky croak that was his own voice.

 

'Rider!'

 

White teeth flashed in the face, in a dreadful mirthless smile, and then the hood fell back. The cloaked figure leaned forward, urging on its horse, and vanished ahead of them into the dark mass of riding shadows. Hoof-beats thickened the air, beat at their hearing; then began to fade.

 

The world seemed to grow a little less dark, the frantic tossing of the coach to slow gradually down.

 

Bran was staring at Will, rigid. 'Who was that?'

 

Will said emptily, 'The Rider, the Black Rider, one of the great Lords of the Dark - ' Suddenly he sat straight, fierce-eyed. 'We mustn't let him go, now he's seen us, we must follow him!' His voice rose, shrill and demanding, calling as if to the whole coach, as if it were a live thing. 'Follow! Follow him! Follow!'

 

The coach lurched faster again, the noise grew, the horses flung themselves frantically forward. Bran grabbed for support. 'Will, you're mad! What are you doing? Follow ... that?' His horror brought the word out in a half-shriek.

 

Will crouched in a swaying corner, his face set. 'We must ... we have to know ... Hold on. Hold on. He makes the terror, by his riding - if we chase, it grows less. Hold tight, wait and see ...

 

They were moving fast now, but without the wildness of panic. The horses kept up a steady strong gallop, swinging the coach like a child's toy on a string. The light grew and grew as if no cloud were anywhere near, and soon sunlight was shafting in again at them through the open windows. Arched stone buildings still edged one side of the broad street, but on the other side now they saw tall trees and smooth grass, stretching into a green distance; paths and gravelled walks criss-crossed the sweep of the grass, here and there.

 

'It must be ... that park.' Bran's voice swung in gulps between one bounce and the next. "The one we saw ... at the beginning... from the roof.'

 

'Perhaps it is. Look!'

 

Will pointed; ahead, two riders had turned from the road and were cantering, without apparent haste now, down one of the small roads across the park. A strange pair they made, two ritualistic figures like images from a chessboard: a rider in black hood and cloak on a coal-black horse, a rider in white hood and cloak on a horse white as snow.

 

'Follow!' Will called.

 

Bran peered back up the long empty sweep of the road as they turned from it. 'But there were so many - like a big dark cloud. Where did they go?'

 

'Where the leaves go in autumn,' Will said.

 

Bran looked at him and seemed suddenly to relax; he grinned. 'There's poetic, now.'

 

Will laughed. 'It's true. Of course, the trouble with leaves is, they grow again...'

 

But his attention was on the two tall riding figures starkly outlined ahead against the soft green of the park. In a few moments the White Rider, as he felt he must call him, dropped aside and trotted quietly away. The coach went on, following the black upright form of the other.

 

Bran said, 'Why should some of the Riders of the Dark be dressed all in white and the rest all in black?'

 

'Without colour ...' Will said reflectively. 'I don't know. Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes - blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads.'

 

The wheels made a crunching sound on the path. They began to see formally patterned flower-beds laid out at either side, with white stone seats set between them, and here and there people sitting on the seats, or strolling, or children playing. Not one of these gave more than a brief glance of mild interest at the Black Rider stalking ahead on his tall black horse, or the plumed stallions pulling the swaying blue coach with its gold-crested door.

 

Bran watched one old man glance up, look at the coach, and turn back at once to his book. "They can see us, now. But they seem... they don't care.'

 

'Maybe they will, later,' Will said. The coach stopped. He opened the door, pushing the step down with his foot. They jumped down to the crunching gravel of the white path; then, as they saw what was all around them, both paused, held for a moment by delight.

 

The air was heavy with fragrance, and everywhere there were roses. Squares, triangles, circles of bright blossom patched the grass all around, red and yellow and white and all colours between. Before them was the entrance to an enclosed circular garden, a tall arch in a high hedge of tumbling red roses. They walked through, almost giddy with the scent. In the great circle of the garden inside, formal balustrades and seats of white marble were set round a glittering fountain where three white dolphins endlessly leapt, spouting a high triple spray of tasselled drops, with a faint arching rainbow caught over all by the sun. And as if to offset the cool lines of the marble, mounds of roses billowed everywhere, enormous bushes growing rampant, tall as trees.

 

Before one of the largest shrubs, a spreading sweetbriar with small pink flowers and a fragrance wafting from it sweet as apples, there stood like a black brand the figure of the Rider on his tall dark horse.

 

Will and Bran drew level with the fountain and paused, facing the man and horse a little way off. The black horse side-stepped, stamping, restless; the Rider twitched sharply at his rein. He put back his hood a little way, and Will saw the fierce, handsome face that he had seen earlier in his life, and a glint of the red-brown hair.

 

'Well, Will Stanton,' said the Rider softly. 'It is a long road from the valley of the Thames to the Lost Land.'

 

Will said, 'And a long road from the ends of the earth, to which the Wild Hunt harried the Dark.'

 

A grimace like pain flicked over the Rider's face; he turned his head a little so that it was shadowed by the hood, though not quickly enough to hide a dreadful scar across all his further cheek. But the turning was brief; in another instant he was erect again, his back a straight proud line.

 

'That was one victory for the Light, but one only,' he said coldly. There will be no other. We have reached our last rising, Old One; we are at the flood. You have no way of stopping us now.'

 

'One way,' Will said. 'Just one.'

 

The Rider turned his bright blue eyes from Will to Bran. He said formally, almost chanting, 'The sword has not the power of the Pendragon until it is in his hand, nor does the Pendragon exist in his own right until his hand is on the sword.' The blue eyes shifted back to Will, and the Rider smiled, but the eyes stayed cold as ice. 'We are before you, Will Stanton. We have been here since first this land was lost, and you may try as you will to take Eirias the sword from the hand that holds it now, but you will not succeed. For that hand is ours.'

 

Will could feel Bran turn to him in quick baffled concern, but he did not look at him; he was studying the Rider. The confidence in the man's face and bearing was immense, seeming a total arrogance, and yet something in Will's instincts told him that it was not altogether complete. Somewhere vulnerability lay; somewhere there was a crack, a tiny crack, in the Dark's certainty of triumph. And in that crack was the only hope the Light had left, now, to check the rising of the Dark.

 

He said nothing, but stared at the Rider for a long time, steadily, holding his gaze, until at last the blue eyes flickered briefly aside like the eyes of an animal. Then he knew that he was right.

 

The Rider said lightly, to cover the movement, 'You would do well to forget the foolishness of pursuing impossible ends, while you are here, and instead enjoy the wonders of the Lost Land. There is none here to help the Dark, and equally there is none here to help you. But there is much to enjoy.'

 

The black horse shifted restlessly, and he twitched at the rein, turning the horse a few steps towards a climbing rose brilliant with enormous buds and full, down-curved yellow flowers.

 

With an assured, almost affected gesture the Rider bent and broke off one yellow rose and sniffed it. 'Such flowers, now. Roses of all the centuries. Marechal Niel, here, never such a scent anywhere ... or that strange tall rose beside you with the small red flowers, called moyesii, that goes its own way, sometimes blooming more heavily than any other rose and then perhaps for years not blooming at all.'

 

'Roses are hard to predict, my lord,' a voice said easily, conversationally; then a small edge came into it. 'And so are the people of the Lost Land.'

 

And Gwion was there, suddenly, a neat dark figure standing beside the fountain. They could not see where he came from; it was as if he stepped out of the rainbow floating over the glittering drops.

 

The Rider's horse stepped uneasily once again; he had difficulty stilling it. He said coldly, 'A hard fate will come to you, minstrel, if you give aid to the Light.'

 

'My fate is my own,' Gwion said.

 

The black stallion tossed its head; it seemed now. Will thought, to be straining to get away from the high-hedged garden. He glanced over his shoulder at the rose-bright arch through which they had come in, and saw, standing out there, dazzling in the sunlight, the still form of the white-cloaked rider on the white horse.

 

Gwion's gaze followed him. He said softly, 'Oho.'

 

'I am not alone in this land,' the Rider said.

 

'No,' Gwion said. 'Indeed you are not. The word was about that the greatest Lords of the Dark were gathered in this Kingdom, and I see it is true. Indeed you have all your strength here - and you will have need of it.' He spoke lightly, without stress, but the last few words were dragged deliberately slowly, and the Rider's face darkened. With an abrupt gesture he pulled his hood about his face, and only the voice, hissing, came from the shadow.

 

'Save yourself, Taliesin. Or be lost with the useless hopes of the Light! Lost!'

 

He wheeled his horse round, the black cloak swinging; his words flickered out like stones. 'Lost!' He gave rein to the restless horse and it sprang towards the arch, the White Rider wheeling in greeting as it approached; a thunder grew suddenly, rapidly out of the distance, and the horsemen of the Dark who had passed Will and Bran earlier came rushing through the park like a great cloud marring the bright day. They bore down on the waiting horses of the two Riders, the Lords of the Dark, and enveloped them and seemed to carry them off; the dark cloud disappeared along the road and the thundering died. And Will and Bran and Gwion stood alone among the roses, in the City, in the sweet-scented garden of the Lost Land.

 

 

 

Part Three: The Lost Land

The Empty Palace

 

Will said, 'Taliesin?'

 

'A name,' Gwion said. 'Just another name.' He put his hand out caressingly to a spray of white roses beside him. 'Do you like what you see of my City, now?'

 

Will did not quite return his quick smile. Something had been nibbling at his mind. 'Did you know we should see the Rider, when you sent us off in the coach?'

 

Gwion grew sober, fingering his beard. 'No, Old One, I did not. The coach was simply to bring you here. But perhaps he knew that. There is little the Dark does not know in the Lost Land. Yet also there is little that they can do.' He swung abruptly towards the fountain. 'Come.'

 

They followed him to a spot before the centre of the fountain, where the water flung up in a glittering spiral from the intertwined white dolphins. Nearby climbed the biggest of all the great sprawling rose-bushes, a tall mound of delicate white dog-roses as broad as a house. A fine spray from the fountain spangled their hair and dampened their faces; Will could see the sparkling drops caught even in Gwion's grey beard.

 

'Look for the arch of the Light,' Gwion said.

 

Will gazed at the dancing water, the gleaming dolphins, the four-petalled roses; everything blurred together. 'You mean the rainbow?'

 

It was there again suddenly, a sun-born curve of hazy colour within the fountain, with the hint of another faint rainbow arching above.

 

Gwion said softly, behind them, 'Look well. Look long.' Intent and obedient they stared at the rainbow, gazed and gazed until their eyes dazzled in the sunlight reflecting from the marble and the leaping water. Then suddenly Bran cried, 'Look!' - and in the same instant Will started forward, clenching his fists. They could see, faintly outlined behind the rainbow, the figure of a man seeming to float in the air; a man in a white robe with a green surcoat, head drooping, every line of his body drawn down by melancholy - and in his hand a glowing sword.

 

Will strained to see more clearly, hardly daring to breathe. The figure half-raised its head, almost as if it sensed their gaze and were seeking to look back; but then lethargy seemed to overtake it again and the head drooped, and the hand...

 

... and nothing was there but the rainbow, arching through the fountain's glittering spray.

 

Bran said, his voice tight, 'Eirias. That was the sword. Who was the man?'

 

'So sad,' Will said. 'Such a sad man.'

 

Gwion let out a long breath, breaking his own tension. 'Did you see? You saw clearly?' There was anxious appeal in his voice.

 

Will looked at him curiously. 'Didn't you?'

 

'This is the fountain of the Light,' Gwion said. The one small touch of the Light's hand that is allowed in the Lost Land. Only those who are of the Light may see what it has to offer. And I am ... not quite of the Light.' He was looking keenly at Will and Bran. 'You will know that face again? The sorrowful face, and the sword?'

 

'Anywhere,' said Will.

 

'Always,' Bran said. 'It was - ' He stopped, perplexed, and looked at Will.

 

Will said, 'I know. There's no way of describing. But, we shall know him. Who is he?'

 

Gwion sighed. 'That is the king. Gwyddno, Lost King of the Lost Land.'

 

'And he has the sword,' Bran said. 'Where is he?' A curious intentness seemed to take possession of him. Will saw, whenever there was any mention of the crystal sword.

 

'He has the sword, and perhaps he will give it to you if he hears you when you speak to him. He has not heard anybody for a long time - not because he cannot hear with his ears, but because he has shut himself up in his mind.'

 

Bran said again, 'Where is he?'

 

'In his tower,' Gwion said. 'His tower in Caer Wydyr;' As he spoke the Welsh words. Will realised suddenly that the faint hit to his speaking of English had all along been the accent of a Welshman; though less pronounced than Bran's.

 

'Caer Wydyr,' Bran said. He looked at Will, his forehead wrinkling. 'That means, the castle of glass.'

 

'A glass tower,' Will said. 'Which you can see in a rainbow.' He looked back at the spiralling jets of the fountain shooting up, breaking, falling in. diamond rain over the shining backs of the dolphins. Then he paused, peering more closely. 'Look down there, Bran. I hadn't noticed. There's something written on the fountain, right down low.'

 

They both bent to look, hands shielding their faces from the spray. A line of lettering was incised in the marble, half hidden by grass; the letters were patched green with moss.

 

'I am the .. ; Will parted the grass with his hands. 'I am the womb of every holt.'

 

Bran frowned. 'The womb of every holt. The womb is where you come from in the mother, so that must be - the beginning, right? But holt? What's a holt?'

 

'A refuge,' Gwion said quietly.

 

Bran pushed his dark glasses down his nose and peered at the carved words. "The beginning of every refuge? What the heck does that mean?'

 

'That I cannot tell you,' Gwion said. 'But I think you should perhaps remember it.' He pointed out through the arch, at the blue coach waiting. 'Will you come?'

 

Will said, as they climbed up the folding step into the coach, 'What is that golden crest on the door, with the leaping fish and the roses?'

 

'A Dyfi salmon, that fish,' Gwion said. 'The heralds will call it, later. Azure, a Salmon naiant Or between three Roses Argent seeded and barbed.' He swung himself up over their heads to sit as coachman, gathering up the reins, and the last words came down faintly. 'That is the crest of Gwyddno the king.'

 

Then he flicked the reins and the black horses tossed their plumed heads and they were away, swinging and rattling through the gardens of the broad green park and out into the City's stone streets. Here and there groups and pairs of people were walking; they lifted their heads, now, as the coach jingled by, and looked after it with surprise and sometimes curiosity. None offered any greeting, but none ignored their passing as before; this time, every head turned.

 

The coach slowed; they swayed round a bend. Looking out, Will and Bran saw that they were turning in at the arched entrance to a courtyard. High pillared walls rose on all sides, set with tall nine-paned windows; fantastic pointed towers rose above the balustraded line of the roof. Every window was blank; they saw no face anywhere.

 

The coach stopped; they climbed out. Before them a narrowing stone staircase rose to a square pillared doorway ornamented with carved stone scrolls and figures - and, dominating the rest, a replica of the crest of the leaping fish from the carriage door. Will and Bran glanced at one another, and then ahead. The door stood open. Nothing but darkness was visible within.

 

Gwion said, behind them, 'It is the palace of Gwyddno Garanhir. The Empty Palace, it has been called, since the day when the king retreated to his castle by the sea and never afterward came out. Go inside, the two of you together. And I will meet you in there, if you find your way.'

 

Will looked back. The splendid coach and the midnight-black horses were quite gone. The great courtyard was empty. Gwion stood at the bottom of the steps, a neat dark figure, his bearded face upturned and sudden lines of anxiety written unaccountably clear upon it. He was tense, waiting.

 

Will nodded. He turned back to the immense open doorway of the palace. Bran stood there gazing in at the murk. He had not moved since before Gwion spoke. Without turning his white head he said, 'Come, on, then.'

 

They went in, side by side. With a long creak and a deep-echoing crash the huge door slammed shut behind them. Instantly the darkness burst into a blaze of white light. Will had a second in which to see Bran recoil, shielding his eyes, before the impact of what lay before them hit him and he gasped aloud.

 

All around, in an endless fierce glitter, were countless repeated images of himself and Bran. He spun round, staring; the Will-images spun round too, a long chorus-line retreating into space. He shouted, instinctively expecting an infinitely repeated echo to go bouncing to and fro, just as the reflections before him echoed through his sight. But only the one sound rang dully around them, and then died.

 

It was the sound that somehow gave Will a sense of the shape of the place where they stood: long, narrow.

 

'Is it a corridor?' he said, bemused.

 

'Mirrors!' Bran was looking wildly to and fro, eyes screwed into slits even behind the dark glasses. 'Mirrors everywhere. It's made of mirrors.'

 

Will's head steadied out of its whirling bewilderment; he began to sort out what he could see. 'Mirrors, yes. Except for the floor.' He looked down at glimmering darkness. 'And that's black glass. Look, up and down. It's a corridor, a long curving corridor all made out of mirrors.'

 

'I can see too many of me,' Bran said with an uneasy laugh. There was a flash of white at each face as all the endless lines of Bran-images instantaneously laughed - and then sobered, staring.

 

Will took a few uncertain steps, flinching as the rows of reflected figures moved with him. The curve of the corridor opened before him a little, reflecting nothing but its own brilliance, like a gleaming empty page in a huge book. He reached out and tugged at Bran's sleeve.

 

'Hey. Walk alongside me. If there's someone else to look at, even out of the comer of your eye, all those reflections don't make you so giddy.'

 

Bran came with him. He said uncertainly, 'You're right.' But when they had gone forward a little way he stopped suddenly; his face looked pinched and ill. 'This is awful,' he said, his voice tight. 'The glass, the brightness, all of it pressing in so close. Pressing, pressing, it's like being in some terrible kind of box.'

 

'Come on,' Will said, trying to sound confident. 'Maybe it opens out round that bend. It can't go on forever.'

 

But as they rounded the curve, peopling the glass walls with their endlessly reflected figures, they came only to a pair of sharply angled comers, breaking the reflections into even more wildly repeated lines, where another mirrored corridor crossed the first so that they had now a choice of three forward directions to take.

 

Bran said unhappily, 'Which way?'

 

'Goodness knows.' Will reached into his pocket and brought out a penny. 'Heads we go right or centre, tails we go left. He spun the coin, caught it, and held out his arm.

 

'Ifs tails,' Bran said. 'Left, then.'

 

'Whoops!' "Will had dropped the penny; they heard it roll and spin. 'Where is it? Ought to be easy enough to find here ... Funny how there don't seem to be any joints anywhere in the glass - its like being inside a sort of square tube - ' He caught sight of the strain on Bran's face, and was shaken. 'Come on - let's get out of here.'

 

They went on, up the left-hand turning. But the glass corridor, identical with the first, seemed endless; it stretched on and on, curved sharply to the left, then straightened again. Their footsteps rang out, dropping into immediate silence whenever they paused. At length they came to another cross-roads of corridors.

 

Bran looked round despondently. 'Looks just the same as the other one.'

 

A glitter that was not glass drew Will's eye to the floor; stooping, he found it was his penny. He straightened, swallowing hard to muffle the sudden hollow feeling in his throat, and held out his hand to Bran.

 

'It is the same. Look.'

 

'Duw. We've come in a circle.' Bran looked at him, frowning. 'You know what? I think we're in a maze.'

 

'A maze ...'

 

'A maze of mirrors. Now there's something to spend your life in.'

 

'Gwion knew, didn't he?' Will thought back, to the grey- bearded face looking up at him tense with concern. 'Gwion said, I shall meet you, if you find your way ...'

 

'You know anything about mazes?'

 

'I was in one at Hampton Court once. Hedges. You had to keep turning right on the way in, and left on the way out. But that one had a centre. This one -'

 

'Those curves.' Bran looked less ill now that he had something to puzzle him. 'Think. Think. We went to our right when we started off, and it curved ...'

 

'It curved to the left.'

 

'And then we came to the crossing, and we took the furthest corridor on the left, and it curved to the left and brought us back to the crossing in a circle.'

 

Will closed his eyes and tried to visualise the pattern. 'So turning left must be wrong. Do we turn right then?'

 

'Yes, look,' Bran said. His pale face was alight with an idea now. Opening his mouth wide, he breathed a long breath over the mirrored wall of the corridor, and drew with his finger in the patch of mist an upward spiral pattern of a series of loops, rising without touching one another. The curving tops of the loops faced the left. It looked like a drawing of a very loose spring standing on end.

 

'It has to look like this. See that first loop? That's the pattern we've walked so far. And mazes always repeat themselves, right?'

 

'So if it goes one loop after another, it's a spiral,' Will said, watching the mist-drawing gradually fade. 'And we wouldn't have to go round each whole loop, we could just go up that side on the right where each loop crosses itself.'

 

'By turning right every time. Come on.' Bran slid triumphantly towards the right-hand corridor.

 

'Wait a minute.' Will breathed at the wall, and drew the spiral again. 'We're facing the wrong way. See? We've been all the way round the first loop, so now we're facing

backwards, back the way we first came. And if we turn right now, we shall really be turning left.'

 

'And just loop the loop again. Sorry, yes. In too much of a hurry, I am.' Bran swung his arms sideways and did a neat jump to turn himself in the other direction. He looked with dislike at the endless reflections of himself that had echoed the jump. 'Come on, I hate these mirrors.'

 

Will looked at him thoughtfully as they followed the curving right-hand corridor. 'You really mean that, don't you? I mean I don't like them either, they're creepy. But you -'

 

'It's the brightness.' Bran looked round uneasily, and quickened his step. 'And more than that. All that reflecting, it does something, it's like having your mind sucked out of you. Aah!' He shook his head for want of words.

 

'Here's the next crossroads. That was a lot quicker.'

 

'So it should be, if we've really got the answer. Turn right again.'

 

Four times they turned to the right, trooping along with their long, long rows of reflected images keeping endless step.

 

And then suddenly, curving after the fourth turn, they came face to face with themselves: startled figures staring back out of a blank mirrored wall.

 

'No!' Will said fiercely, and heard his voice tremble as he saw Bran's head and shoulders droop in despair.

 

Bran said quietly, 'Dead end.'

 

'But how could we have gone wrong?'

 

'Pity knows. But we did. I suppose we have to go back and ... start again.' Bran let his knees crumple, and sat down in a heap on the black glass floor.

 

Will looked at him in the mirror. 'I don't believe it.'

 

'But there it is.'

 

'I mean, I don't believe we have to start again.'

 

'Oh yes we do.' Bran looked up bleakly at their reflected images: the blue sweater and jeans of the standing figure, the white head and dark glasses of the figure hunched on the floor. 'Once this happened to us before, once a long time ago - finding a blank wall stopping us. But that was where your magic as an Old One could help. It can't here, can it?'

 

'No,' Will said. 'No, not in the Lost Land.'

 

'Well then.'

 

'No,' Will said obstinately. He bit at a thumbnail, staring round at the blind mirrored walls that could give back nothing but what they were given to reflect, and that yet, somehow, seemed to hold within them a spacious world of their own. 'No. There's something ... there must be some- thing we ought to be remembering ...' He looked down at Bran, his eyes not quite seeing him. "Think: what has Gwion said to us in all the time since we first saw him, that seemed to be anything like a message? What has he told us to do?'

 

'Gwion? He told us to get into the coach ...' Bran scrambled to his feet, his pale forehead furrowed, as he thought backwards. 'He said he would meet us if we found our way - but that was the very last thing. Before that... there was something he said we should remember, you're right. What was it? Remember, he said, remember...'

 

Will stiffened. 'Remember. The face of the man in the rainbow, and after that another thing, the writing on the fountain. I think you should perhaps remember...'

 

Remembering, he stood very straight, stretching out both his arms stiff in front of him, and pointing all ten fingers at the mirrored glass wall that barred their way.

 

'I am the womb of every holt,' he said, slowly and clearly, in the words that they had read through the muffling grass on the mossy stone of the fountain in the park.

 

And above their heads on the glass, faintly and gradually, another single line of words began to glow, growing brighter and brighter until their brilliance flashed out dulling any other light around them. They had just time to look at the words and comprehend them: I am the blaze on every hill. And then the light grew for an instant intolerably strong so that they flinched away from it, and with a strange soft sound, like an explosion muffled by many miles' distance, all the glass walls enclosing them shattered and musically fell.

 

And they stood free, with the bright words hanging in the darkness before them, and the maze of mirrors gone as if it had never been there.

 

 

 

Part Three: The Lost Land

The Journey

 

The blazing words faded from the air above Will's head, leaving the imprint of their brightness so that for a few moments the letters still hung ghostly across his vision. Beside him he heard Bran let out a long slow breath of relief.

 

Gwion's voice said warmly, from the shadows, 'And you did find your way.'

 

Blinking, Will saw him standing before them, in a high vaulted hall whose white walls were hung with rich tapestries and brilliant paintings. He looked back. There, across the hall, was the great carved door which had slammed behind them when they had first found themselves in the maze. Of the maze itself there was no sign at all.

 

Bran said, with a quiver still in his voice, 'Was it real?' Then he gave a small shaking laugh. 'There's a silly question, now.'

 

Gwion came forward to them, smiling. 'Real is a hard word,' he said. 'Almost as hard as true, or now ... Come. Now that you have proved yourselves by breaking the barrier of the City, I may set you on the way to the Castle.'

 

He pulled back a tapestry curtain on the wall, revealing the entrance to a narrow circular staircase. He beckoned, and in line they went up the stairs: Will followed Gwion's feet, quiet in their soft leather shoes; the stairs seemed to wind endlessly up and up, in curving sections. On and on they went, for so long a climb that his breath began to rasp and he felt they must be hundreds of feet into the sky.

 

Then Gwion said, 'Hold a moment,' and paused. He took something from his pocket. It was a heavy iron key. In the dim light from one of the narrow opaque windows set into the staircase wall, Will saw that the top of the key was wrought into a decorative pattern: a circle, quartered by a cross. Will stared, motionless. Then he looked up and saw Gwion's dark eyes glittering enigmatically down at him.

 

'Ah, Old One,' Gwion said softly. 'The Lost Land is full of signs from long ago, but few of its people now remember what the signs mean.'

 

He opened the small door barring their way, and suddenly sunlight was pouring down on them, washing away the last oppressive memories of the mirrored maze.

 

Will and Bran came out with their faces up to the blue sky as if they were prisoners emerging from jail. They found themselves behind a balustrade of wrought gold, looking out over the gold and glittering roofs of the City and the mounded green sweep of the park, just as they had done in the very beginning - but from a greater height than before. In a moment or two they saw that the balcony on which they stood was the lower rim of a great curving white and golden roof - and they realised that it was this, the palace of King Gwyddno, the Empty Palace of the Lost Land, which was topped by the marvellous dome, banded in crystal and gold, that they had first seen glittering in the dawn. Craning his neck. Will thought he could just make out the very top where the golden arrow pointed to the western sea.

 

Gwion came and stood at their backs, pointing in the same direction. Will noticed a ring on his fourth finger, with a dark stone carved into the shape of a leaping fish.

 

Out along the line of his arm, they saw the roofs of the City end, giving way to a green-gold patchwork of fields stretching into a haze of heat. Far, far away in the distance through the haze Will thought he could see dark trees, with behind them the purple sweep of mountains and the long glimmer of the sea, but he could not be sure. Only one thing out there seemed distinct: a glowing pencil of light rising out of the hazy green blur where the Lost Land seemed to meet the sea.

 

'Look at that,' Bran said. For a moment his hand hovered in the air beside Gwion's, its fingers looking milky-pale and very young beside the lean brown hand with its dark ring. 'That, there - we saw it from the mountain. Will, remember? Above Cwm Maethlon.' He glanced ruefully at Will. 'Another world, isn't it? D'you know, I had completely forgotten them? D'you think they are all right?'

 

'I think so,' Will said slowly. He was staring out still at the hazed horizon, but not seeing it: lost in a concern that had been flickering through his mind since first they came to the Lost Land. 'I wish I knew. And I wish I knew where Merriman is. I can't... reach him. Bran. I can't reach him. I can't hear him. Even though I think he meant to be with us, here.'

 

'So he did. Old One,' Gwion said unexpectedly. 'But the enchantment of the Lost Land keeps him away, if he has missed the only moment for breaking it.'

 

Will turned sharply to him, a deep instinct stirring. 'You know him, don't you? Some time a long way back, you have been close to Merriman.'

 

'Very close,' Gwion said, with an ache of affection deep in the words. 'And one thing I am permitted to say to you, now that you have spoken of him to me. He should have been here to join you, in this palace. But I am beginning to fear that in some way the Dark has held him back, in that other world of yours. And if now he has lost the moment for entering the Lost Land, he cannot now come.'

 

Will said, 'Not at all?'

 

'No,' Gwion said.

 

Will suddenly realised how much he had been hoping for Merriman's strong presence to be there, soon, soon, as a support. He swallowed down panic, and looked at Bran.

 

'Then we have nothing but what the Lady said. That we shall find the crystal sword in the glass tower, among the seven trees, where the - the horn will stop the wheel.'

 

Bran said, 'And a white bone will prevent us, and a flying may-tree will save us. 'Whatever that may mean.'

 

'The glass tower,' Will said again. His eyes went back to the gleaming pencil on the horizon.

 

Gwion said, 'That is Caer Wydyr, out there where you are looking. The Castle of the Lost Land, with its glass tower. Where my master sits, wrapped in a deathly melancholy that none can take away.' His voice was bleak and sad.

 

Will said hesitantly, 'May we know more than that?'

 

'Oh yes,' Gwion said sombrely. "There are things I must tell you, of the Land and of the sword, for Merlion's sake. As much as I can.' He came to the edge of the golden balustrade and gripped its rim with both hands, looking out over the city. His beard jutted, and the strong nose was outlined against the sky; he looked like a profiled head from a coin.

 

He said, 'The Land is neither of the Dark nor the Light, nor ever was. Its enchantment was of a separate kind, the magic of the mind and the hand and the eye, that owes no allegiance because it is neither good nor bad. It has no more to do with the behaviour of men, or the great absolutes of the Light and the Dark, than does the blossom of a rose or the curving leap of a fish. Yet our craftsmen, the greatest ever in Time or out of it, did not... care to work for the Dark. They did their most marvellous work for the Lords of the Light. They wove tapestries, carved thrones and chests, forged candlesticks of silver and gold. They wrought four of the six great Signs of the Light.'

 

Will looked up quickly.

 

Gwion smiled at him. 'Ah, Sign-seeker,' he said gently. 'Long long ago in the Lost Land, forgotten by all its people now, there was the beginning of that gold-linked chain of yours, iron and bronze and water and fire... And at the last, a craftsman of this land made the great sword Eirias for the Light.'

 

Bran said, tense, 'Who made it?'

 

'It was made by one who was close to the Light,' Gwion said, 'but who was neither a Lord of the Light nor one of the Old Ones - there are none such bred in this land ... He was the only one who had the skill to make so great a wonder. Even here, where many are skilled. A great craftsman, unparalleled.' He spoke with a slow reverence, shaking his head in wonder, remembering. 'But the Riders of the Dark, they could roam freely through the land, since we had neither desire nor reason to keep any creature out - and when they heard that the Light had asked for the sword, they demanded that it should not be made. They knew, of course, that words already long written foretold the use of Eirias, once it was forged, for the vanquishing of the Dark.'

 

Will said, 'What did he do, the craftsman?'

 

'He called together all the makers in the land,' Gwion said. He tilted his head a little higher. 'All those who wrote, or brought life to others' words or music, or who made beautiful things. And he said to them, I have this work in me, I know it, that will be the peak of everything I can ever make or do, and the Dark is trying to forbid me to do it. We may all suffer, if I deny them their will, and I cannot therefore be responsible alone for deciding. Tell me. Tell me what I should do.'

 

Bran was gazing at him. 'What did they say?'

 

'They said. You must make it.' Gwion smiled, proudly. 'Without any exception. Make the sword, they said. So he went away into a place of his own, and made Eirias, and in a land of wonders it was the most wonderful and powerful thing that had ever been made. And the fury of the Dark was very great, but impotent, for the Dark Lords knew that they could neither destroy a work created for the Light, nor steal it, nor bring any... harm to its creator.'

 

He fell silent, gazing out at the misted horizon.

 

'Go on,' Bran said urgently. 'Go on!'

 

Gwion sighed. 'So the Dark did a simple thing,' he said. 'They showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing - fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to accomplish anything of great worth - fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such endless fears, that are the doom of people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds. And gradually, he was put into despair. Fear grew in him, and he escaped from it into lethargy - and so hope died, and a terrible paralysing melancholy took its place. He is held by it now, he is held captive by his own mind. He, and the sword Eirias that he made, with him. Despair holds him prisoner, despair, the most terrible creation of all. For in great men, the mind can produce giant spectres of great power. And King Gwyddno is a great man.'

 

'The King!' Will said slowly. 'The King of the Lost Land made the sword?'

 

'Yes,' Gwion said. 'Long, long ago the king went alone into his castle, into the glass tower of Caer Wydyr. And he made the sword Eirias, and there he and the sword have been, alone, ever since. Held in a trap made by the king himself. And only you, perhaps, may spring that trap.' He seemed to be speaking to both of them, but he was looking at Bran.

 

Bran said, his pale face drawn by horror, 'All alone? All alone since then? Hasn't anyone ever seen him?'

 

'I have seen him,' Gwion said. But there was suddenly such pain in his voice that no one asked him anything more.

 

The sun was warm on their faces; heat grew in the gold and crystal banding of the dome, and the roofs of the City shimmered before them. Somewhere in the distance, out over the green fields of the Lost Land, Will heard a seagull cry.

 

He had a sudden illusion of Merriman's presence, and at once then a sense of great urgency. Merriman was not there, not even to be heard in the mind: he knew it, and yet the urgency lingered, as if it were an echo from something happening somewhere else, a long way away. Will looked at Gwion's face and could see the awareness of it there too. Their eyes met.

 

'Yes,' Gwion said. 'It is time. You must journey to the Castle, across the Country that lies between, and that I have made possible as far as I can. But I cannot tell you what you may encounter on the way, nor protect you against it. Remember, you are in the Lost Land, and it is the enchantment of the Land which is in command here.' He looked anxiously out at the gleaming distant tower on the horizon. 'Look well, now, at the place where you must go, and set your minds on reaching it. And then, come.'

 

They looked once at the finger of light, far out in the haze, and then they followed Gwion back down the staircase, into the Empty Palace where no king now lived. But even though the king was gone, they saw now that the palace still held others beside Gwion - and they found that they had been there before.

 

When they were halfway down the curving staircase, Gwion opened a door in the wall that Will had not noticed before. He led them down a different stair, straight and shallower, in towards the centre of the palace. And all at once they heard a faint murmur of voices ahead, and found themselves in a long wood-panelled room filled with books and bookshelves and heavy tables.

 

It was the long gallery, the room like a library. Will's eyes went to the side wall and saw that there still was the darkness, empty space with no light or shadow visible: the great theatre in which all life might be played. Other things, though, were not the same as before. People crowded the room now, filling it with a warm buzz of conversation, and any who glanced up at the three of them standing in the doorway smiled, or raised a hand in greeting.

 

They walked through, up and down over the strangely differing levels of its floor; many people they passed spoke a word or two to Gwion, and the warmth was clear in every face that looked at Will and Bran. One woman touched Will gently on the shoulder as they went by, and said, 'Safe journey to you.' As he looked up, startled, he heard a man beside them say softly to Bran, 'Pob hwyl!'

 

Bran said in his ear, 'Good luck, he said. How do they all know?'

 

Will shook his head, wondering. They followed Gwion's neat dark-clad figure down the room, walking quickly, and then at the far end a man who had been standing bent over a large book on a table straightened and turned as they approached, putting out a hand to halt them. Will thought he remembered the face as that of the man to whom he had spoken when they had first been in the room: a man who had not then seemed to see or hear him, and who had been reading a book whose pages were blank.

 

'See, before you go,' the man said, with the lilt of North Wales stronger in his voice than Will heard it from Gwion or even Bran. 'There is a part of this book that you must see, and remember.'

 

'Remember...' said Gwion softly, looking at them, and the echo woke in both their minds. The book lay open before them on the heavy oak table; on one curving vellum page was a painting, and on the other a single line of words.

 

Will was staring at the picture. In a stylised green world of trees and lawns, among beds of roses bright as those where they had encountered the Rider, it showed the figure of a young woman, fair-haired, robed in blue, standing looking out at them. Her face was heart-shaped, fine-boned, delicately beautiful; she was serious, neither smiling nor sad.

 

'It is the Lady!' Will said.

 

Bran said in surprise, 'But you said she was very old.' He reflected for a moment. 'Of course, that just depends, doesn't it?'

 

'It is the Lady,' Will said again, slowly. "There's that big rose-coloured ring on her finger, too, I've never seen her without it. And look there - in the picture behind her, isn't that -'

 

'The fountain!' Bran peered closer, looking over his glasses. 'It's the same fountain, the one we were at in the park - and so that must be the same rose garden. But how -'

 

Will had his finger on the line of thick black manuscript on the facing page. He read aloud, 'I am the queen of every hive.'

 

'Remember,' the man said. He closed the book.

 

'Remember,' Gwion said. 'And then go.' Facing them, he put one hand briefly on a shoulder of each and looked carefully into their eyes. 'Do you know this place, the gallery we are in? Of course. So you will remember the way by which you came into it, that you must follow now. I stay here, for a while. There are men and women of some art in this place, and they will tell me what they can of Merriman. I will be with you again, but you must go on, now, at once.'

 

Will looked down, and found the square open trapdoor in the floor, and the ladder leading down beneath. 'That way?'

 

'That way,' Gwion said. 'And then, take what you will find, and the finding will start you on your way.' The strong grey-bearded face broke into its warm, illumining smile. 'Go well, my friends.'

 

Down into the shadows Bran and Will clambered, more confident than when they had scrambled up the ladder in the early morning, linked by the little horn that hung forgotten again now from Will's belt. On level ground once more, they groped their way forward in the murk, and came to the small wooden door. Will felt its pitted surface with the flat of his hands.

 

'No handle or anything on this side, either.'

 

'It opened outwards, didn't it? Perhaps you just push.'

 

And at the first gentle pressure the door did swing outward, so that they stood blinking for a moment at the light of the street outside. Then they went out, the door swinging shut behind them with a crash that showed it would not open so easily again. And there in the narrow shady street, waiting for them, were the two white-maned golden horses they had ridden there so long and so short a time ago.

 

The horses tossed their beads as if in greeting; the silver harness rang like sleighbells. Without a word Will and Bran swung themselves up into the saddles, with the same unaccountable ease as before, and the horses trotted away up the narrow street, between the high grey walls with the thin bright strip of blue sky far above.

 

They came out into a broader place, filled with people who seemed at once to recognise them; who stood waving, calling out in greeting. The horses walked carefully through the crowd; the calling grew into a spasmodic cheering; children ran alongside them, laughing and hallooing. Bran and Will grinned at one another in pleased embarrassment. On they went, down the broad paved street, until they reached a towering wall, with a great gateway in it through which the road ran. Through the arch they could see a glimpse of green fields and distant trees.

 

The crowds stood thick before the arch, but the golden horses went stepping on, never pausing, nudging their way gently through.

 

'Good fortune to you!'

 

'Safe travelling!'

 

'A good journey!'

 

All around, the people of the City called and waved; children ran and danced and shouted; a group of girls beside the gate stood laughing and throwing flowers. Will put up his hand half in self-defence and caught a wide red rose; looking down, he saw the dark-haired girl who had thrown it blushing and smiling. He grinned at her, and stuck the flower into his top pocket.

 

Then all at once they were outside the great gate of the City, and all the crowd was gone. Before them lay broad green fields, and a rough sandy road stretching brown-gold into the distance with a wood beyond. The voices from the city died away. Somewhere a lark sang in the summer sky; a blue sky, patched here and there with puffy fair-weather clouds, the sun high amongst them now. The horses turned up the sandy road and went on without breaking step, at a steady walk. Bran eyed the flower in Will's pocket. 'Oooh!' he said in a mocking falsetto. 'A red rose, is it?'

 

Will said amiably, 'Get lost.'

 

*Not so pretty as Jane, that one who threw it.'

 

'As who?' Will said.

 

'Jane Drew. Don't you think she's pretty, then?'

 

'I suppose so, yes,' Will said, surprised. 'I never thought about it.'

 

Bran said, 'One good thing about you, you're uncomplicated.'

 

But Will's mind had jumped backward. He wound the loose rein thoughtfully round one finger as he swayed steadily to and fro on the tall horse. 'I hope they're all right, back there.'

 

Bran said, roughly, abruptly, 'Better forget them, for now.'

 

Will looked up sharply. 'What d'you mean?'

 

Without speaking. Bran pointed out to one side, past him. hi the distance across the flat green fields Will saw a patch of black and white, moving fast, in a direction parallel to the road along which they were travelling. He knew it could only be the Riders of the Dark, heading, like themselves, for the Castle of the Lost Land.

 

 

 

Part Three: The Lost Land

The Mari Llwyd

 

They watched the troop of Riders, miniature in the distance, moving fast across the fields. Will's horse tossed its head suddenly, snuffing the air, and began to quicken its pace.

 

Bran came up level with him. 'They're going a good lick. Trying to get to the Castle before we do?'

 

'I suppose so.'

 

'Shall we race?'

 

'I don't know.' Will looked down at his restless mount. 'The horses want to.'

 

Bran was sitting poised in the saddle, his pale face alert; he smiled. "Think you can stay on?'

 

Will laughed, a sudden wild exhilaration seizing him. 'Just watch!' He gave no more than a flick to the reins before the horse was off, leaping out, galloping eagerly along the hard sandy track. Bran was beside him, leaning forward, white hair flying, yelling with delight. On and on they went, past stretches of ripening oats and wheat, past fields where placid cattle grazed - some the familiar black, but many pure white. The horses ran smoothly, confidently. In the distance, the Riders of the Dark raced parallel: then, after a while, disappeared behind the far edge of the wood which lay in the centre of the Country, between the City and the Castle of the Lost Land.

 

Will had assumed that their own road too would skirt this wood, on the nearer side. But when he raised his head out of the whirl of riding, he found that they had not turned; instead the trees seemed to be reaching out around them, cutting off their view of the shining glass tower. He and Bran were galloping straight towards the wood, and the wood was growing, rising before them, far darker and more dense than it had seemed before.

 

The horses began to slow their pace.

 

'Come on!' Bran twitched his reins impatiently.

 

'They know best,' Will said. 'I don't like the looks of that wood.'

 

Bran glanced up, flinching at the size of the dark mass looming ahead. "They aren't stopping, though. Why didn't they go around it?'

 

'I suppose they have to go where the track goes. And I didn't notice where it was going. Should have done.'

 

'We both should have done. Oh well.' The horses were walking again now. Bran pushed one arm across his forehead. 'Lord, it's hot. The sun's still high.'

 

The woodland was sparse and open at first, leafy with bracken and undergrowth, still bright through the dappling shade. The road, though narrowed to a track, wound through the trees clear and sandy, but gradually it became less distinct, with patches of grass growing in the sand and the arms of creeping plants reaching across, and now the air was cool as the wood grew deeper. The horses stepped warily, in single file. Few birds sang here. Will and Bran began to be conscious of the silence. The trees were larger and thicker; the wood went on and on.

 

Will tried for as long as he could to ignore the feeling drifting insidiously into his mind as the light grew dim and the trees more dominant, but he knew he was afraid.

 

There was nothing to be heard now but the soft rise and fall of the horses' feet. The path they trod was completely overgrown yet still visible; covered, as if to mark it from its surroundings, by a mat of some small creeping weed with dark green leaves. Somewhere among the trees edging the path ahead, a bird whirred abruptly away; the horses checked nervously.

 

'They're as scared as I am,' Will said, trying to brighten his voice. A branch rustled nearby in the wood, and he jumped.

 

Bran looked round in the gloom. He said uneasily, 'Should we go back?' But as if in answer the horses began walking steadily forward again. Will stroked the light mane on the neck before him; the horse's ears were laid back flat, but still he went doggedly on.

 

"Perhaps its just a ... barrier,' he said suddenly. 'Like the maze. Perhaps they know there's not really anything to be scared of.'

 

Some unseen creatures rose in the underbrush beside the path and went crashing off through the still trees and the green seas of fern all around; Will and Bran gasped, but this time the horses walked on unheeding. The trees interlaced overhead. Will rode with his teeth clenched, fighting off panic, comforted only by the steady swaying of his tall horse. The air was cool and damp; they crossed a small sluggish stream half-buried in fern. Then almost imperceptibly, the horses' pace began to quicken. Light began to filter through the branches overhead once more; sand appeared between the tight-woven green leaves of the matted path.

 

'We're coming out!' Bran said in a half-whisper high with relief. 'You were right, the horses knew it was just spookiness. We're coming out!'

 

The horses began to trot, an easy swinging motion; they tossed their heads as if from a sense of release. Will felt the pounding of his heart slide back to normal; he sat up straighter, ashamed of his fear, and looked up at the thinning trees.

 

'Blue sky again, look. Ouf, what a difference!'

 

And so they were both relaxed in the saddle, holding loose reins, looking up unprepared, when suddenly one of the horses gave a high terrified whinny, and both shied, rearing, as something large and loud rushed at them out of the trees. And before they knew it Will and Bran were jerking backward, clutching wildly for rein or saddlebow, tumbling helpless to the ground. The two golden horses bolted in panic across the rough sedgy pasture that stretched away from the wood.

 

Will had a quick glimpse of the thing that was chasing them. He cried out, in horror and disbelief, 'No!'

 

Bran gave a croaking shout without words, and they stumbled up and fled unthinking over the fields. In the heat of the summer sunshine Will felt cold. His head sang. He wanted to be sick. He was too frightened even to think of fear.

 

It was the skeleton of a giant horse, staring with the blind eye-sockets of a skull, running and leaping and prancing on legs of bone driven by ghostly muscles long rotted away. It caught them almost at once. Faster than any living horse it galloped and without any sound. Silently it overtook them, head turned, grinning, an impossible horror. The white bones of its great rib-cage glittered in the sun. It tossed its dreadful silent head, and red ribbons dangled and fluttered like long banners from the grinning lower jaw.

 

The creature was playing with them, driving them this way and that, as a kitten plays with a beetle. It leapt to and fro before them, then stopped in its tracks, hooves skidding in the sandy soil. Then with the leering skull thrust out, jaws open wide, it charged at them in terrible silence - and was suddenly past them, behind them, waiting again. Swinging round wildly, Bran stumbled and fell.

 

The skull tossed on the spine that was a neck; the teeth glittered, the red ribbons danced round a strange broken stump in the centre of the bony forehead. In the same soundless menace it stood watching them out of the blind skull, hoof and bone pawing at the ground. Will swallowed.

 

'You all right? Get up!'

 

Bran was sitting up, blinking wide tawny eyes; his glasses were gone. 'The Mari Llwyd!' he whispered. 'The Mari Llwyd!' He was staring at the thing as if bewitched.

 

'Get up, quick!' Will had glimpsed a refuge nearby. In panic he dragged Bran to his feet. The spectre began to circle them, slowly, silently.

 

'Over here! Come on!'

 

It was a building, he saw. The strangest of buildings: a small low house made of blocks of grey stone, with a once- thatched roof covered in turf and straggling grass and a great swathe of branches blossoming white. A hawthorn tree was growing there from the ancient roof, a low tree not much bigger than a bush.

 

Bran stood transfixed, his eyes on the skeleton. 'The Mari Llwyd!' he whispered again.

 

'Close your eyes!' Will said fiercely. He thrust his hand in front of Bran's face to cut off the sight of the monstrous horse, and in the same moment the right words came to him. 'Quick, think, what did the Lady say?'

 

'The Lady?' Bran said dully. But his head turned.

 

'What did the Lady say to Jane? Think!'

 

'To Jane.' Bran's face began to clear. 'To tell us ... a white bone will prevent you ... and a flying may-tree -'

 

'Will save you. Look at it. Look at it!' Will turned him to the stone house with the blossoming white tree growing from its roof. The thing stalking them wheeled closer, closer. With a sound like a sob Bran stumbled forward; Will pushed him in through the door and slammed it shut behind them. He stood leaning against it, gasping for breath. There was a prickling silence outside.

 

Bran looked down at his hands. He was still clutching the saddlebag from his vanished horse, as if it were a lifebelt. Dropping it on the floor he rubbed his stiff fingers and looked at Will. 'Sorry.'

 

But Will was not listening; he had crossed to the one small window that let in a dim shadowy light through the chunky stone wall. A broken shutter hung from the window-frame; there was no glass. Will's face was pale; Bran saw fear in it.

 

Will said huskily, 'Can you look?'

 

'I'm all right now.' Bran came to stand beside him. And when he looked through the window he clutched Will's arm without knowing it, so hard that the fingertips dug in deep and afterwards left a mark behind.

 

The great white skeleton of the horned horse, dead and yet alive, was wheeling to and fro in front of the cottage, to and fro, to and fro. Its four bony legs danced beneath the curving empty white strips of the rib-cage and the flattened arcs of the hip-blades. The long beribboned skull was jerking up and down in a dreadful dead frenzy, faster and faster; each time it faced the cottage it dropped its forehead like a charging bull and paused for an instant before turning restlessly away and wheeling to and fro once more.

 

Will whispered, 'It's going to run at us. Charge at the door. What can we do?'

 

'Block the door? Would that stop it?'

 

*Not a hope.'

 

'Isn't there anything you can do, make happen -'

 

'We're in the Lost Land ...'

 

And the monstrous thing out there in the sunshine made one last great curving turn before it would charge at the door to burst in to their destruction. Wheeling deliberately close to the window of the house, out of its hollow-eyed skull the creature laughed dreadfully, soundlessly in at them for a second. It was the last second. As the thing passed so close, a long flurry like snow came down past the window from above, a fluttering flickering cloud of white flakes falling on the apparition, all the petals of the hawthorn tree falling, dropped in a long soft shower. And the horse that was the skeleton of a horse collapsed, as if the strings had been cut from a marionette, and fell apart. Every bone fell from every other bone, clattering down to the ground, rattling as clear now as all had been silent before. And nothing was left but a heap of white bones gleaming in the sun, bleached, long dead, with faded red ribbons drooping from the long grinning skull that lay askew on top of the pile.

 

Bran let out a long soft breath, his hands going up to cover his eyes; he swung aside and slumped gently down to the floor. So it was only Will, standing wide-eyed in wonder beside the window, who saw the flurry of white petals rise again, fluttering, alive, like a great crowd of feathery white plume moths he had seen before, somewhere, somewhere - and rise flickering into the sky and out of sight, far away.

 

Will turned unsteadily, uncertain whether to trust his knees. He stood gazing at the dim-lit room. It was a little while before he properly saw anything. But as his churning senses began to calm again, he found he was looking at the door: an ancient door of rotting, battered wood, which would have withstood no impact of any kind at all. He could see some words written over it, with the faint glimmer of gold in them. There was not enough light to read what they said. Will went shakily across and pushed open the door; brightness came in.

 

Bran said slowly, behind him, reading: 'I am the shield for every head.'

 

'And it's written inside, where we couldn't see it,' Will said, stepping back to peer up at the words. 'So we might never have dared to come in, if it hadn't been for what the Lady said.'

 

Bran was sitting up, arms over his knees, white head drooping. 'Duw. That... thing ...'

 

'Don't talk about it,' Will said; a shiver went over him like a cold breeze. Then he remembered something. 'But Bran, what was the name you called it? When it had you ... hypnotised ... you called it something in Welsh.'

 

'Ah,' Bran said. 'The original Nightmare, that thing. There is an old Christmas custom, in South Wales, of something called the Mari Llwyd, the Grey Mare - a procession goes through the streets, and a man dressed up in a white sheet carries the skull of a horse stuck upon a pole. He can make its jaws open and shut and pretend to bite people. And one Christmas when I was very small the Rowlands took us down there visiting, my Da and me, and I saw the Mari Llwyd and it frightened the lights out of me. Terrible. Screaming nightmares for weeks.' He looked up at Will with a weak smile. 'If anyone had really wanted to put me out of my head, they couldn't have chosen a better way.'

 

Will came back into the room, leaving the door open and sunlight shafting in. 'Was it the Dark? Hard to tell. One way or another it must have been. Some ancient haunting of the Lost Land, woken by - '

 

'By the Riders, maybe,' Bran said thoughtfully. 'The Riders, passing.' He reached for the saddlebag he had dropped on the rough slate floor, and looked inside. 'Hey - food! You hungry?'

 

'A bit,' Will said. Prowling round the cottage, he peered into the only other room, at the back, but decided from the smell and tatters of ancient hay that it had only ever been used for animals. In the main room, the walls were drystone, heavy chunks of rock and slate fitted together without mortar; there was no furniture of any kind, though a few rough shelves were attached to one wall. It was a far cry from the sophisticated elegance of the City. But as he ran his finger idly along a shelf Will came upon one unexpected object: a small mirror, set in a heavy oak frame carved with a pattern of leaping fish. He rubbed the dirt from the glass with his sleeve, and propped the mirror up on its shelf.

 

Bran came up behind him. 'Here, cup your hands, boy. Gwion's Health Food we have here - two apples and a big bag of hazelnuts. Shelled, mind you. Have some, they taste wonderful.' Cheerfully chewing, he looked up and saw Will staring at the mirror. He grimaced. 'Ach y fi! Haven't you had enough mirrors for a while?'

 

Will scarcely heard. Looking at Bran's reflection in the mirror, he could see another familiar face behind him.

 

'Merriman!' he cried joyously, whirling round.

 

But behind him he found only Bran, mouth half-open as the cheerful enjoyment on his face changed to alarm. The room was empty, save for the two of them.

 

Will looked back at the mirror, and Merriman was still there. The shadowed eyes in the angular face stared at him, from behind Bran's puzzled reflected head.

 

'I am here,' said Merriman to him out of the mirror. His face was drawn and anxious. 'With you and yet not with you, and I must tell you that Bran can neither see nor hear me, since he is not yet grown to power... I am not allowed to come to you Will, or even speak in the ways of the Old Ones. As Gwion told you, I had only one moment in which to pass through the Law of the Lost Land, and just as that moment came, the craft of the Dark caught me back to another time. But we have this crack of an instant. You do well. Be confident. There is nothing you cannot do now, if you try.'

 

'Oh dear,' Will said. His voice sounded to him small and lost, and suddenly he felt small and lost indeed.

 

'What's the matter?' Bran said, perplexed.

 

Will did not hear him. 'Merriman, are the others all right?'

 

'Yes,' Merriman said sombrely. 'In danger - but all right for now.'

 

A panic of loneliness fluttered at the back of Will's mind, yet somehow the memory of the destruction of the nightmare horse helped to keep it at bay. 'What must we do?' he said.

 

Bran was standing very still, staring at him in the mirror without a word.

 

'Remember the Lady's words, as you have done.' There was trust in Merriman's reflected face. 'Go on now, and take care to remember other things you have been told, there in the Lost Land. You can do no more than your best. And remember one thing from me, Will - you may trust Gwion with your lives. As once long ago I trusted him with mine.' An affectionate warmth deepened his voice. He gave Will one last hard look. 'The Light will carry you, once you return with the sword. Go well. Old One,' he said.

 

Then he was gone. Will turned aside from the mirror, letting out a long breath.

 

Bran said in a whisper, 'Was he here? Has he gone?'

 

'Yes.'

 

'Why couldn't I see him? Where was he?'

 

'In the mirror.'

 

'In the mirror!' Bran looked at it fearfully. Glancing down, he found the bag of nuts forgotten in his hands, and thrust it at Will. 'Here. Eat. What did Merriman say?'

 

Suddenly hungry. Will stuffed his mouth with hazelnuts. 'That it's certain he can't come to the Lost Land,' he said muffled. 'That we have to go on alone. To remember things we've been told - like that, he must mean.' He pointed to the writing over the cottage door. 'And - that we can trust Gwion.'

 

'We knew that already,' Bran said.

 

'Yes.' Will thought of the lean figure with the strong grey-bearded face and the brilliant smile. 'I wonder who Gwion is? And what he is...'

 

'He is a maker,' Bran said unexpectedly.

 

Will paused in his chewing. 'A what?'

 

'He is a bard, I would bet. He has the callouses from the harp on his fingertips. But mostly it was the way he spoke of the makers, of all kinds, when he was telling us the king's story. With love ...'

 

'And he and Merriman must have gone through great danger together, once ... Well, I suppose we shall find out sometime. Here - ' Will handed over the bag of nuts. 'You have the rest. They are good. Did you say there were apples?'

 

'One each.' Bran passed one over, and began rolling up the saddlebag.

 

Will went to the doorway, biting into his apple; it was small, hard and yellow, but astonishingly sweet and juicy. The heap of white bones lay dead and bleached in the sun-light; he tried not to look at it, but raised his gaze out to the Country.

 

'Bran! See how close we are!'

 

The sun was high in a blue sky flecked with puffy white clouds. Out over the rough pastureland, perhaps a mile away, a glittering tower rose from a clump of tall trees; the sunlight struck from it so brightly that its brilliance dazzled them.

 

Bran came out. They stood looking at the Castle for a long moment. Beyond it, the Lost Land ended in the flat shimmering horizon of the blue sea. Will turned from it for a last look at the low, spreading hawthorn tree that grew from the roof of the little house. He stared. The tree that had been covered in milky white blossom, the enchanted snowstorm to destroy the Mari Llwyd, was thick now with bright red berries, clustering along the branches, brilliant as flame.

 

Bran shook his head in wonder. Both he and Will wordlessly touched the sturdy stone wall of the cottage, in an instinctive grateful farewell. Then they set out on foot across the tussocky grass of the pasture, towards the glittering pointing tower.

 

And when they looked back once more at the little shielding house with the tree growing from its roof, they saw no house there at all, but only a thicket of clustering hawthorn bushes, red-berried, growing in the open field.

 

 

 

Part Three: The Lost Land

Caer Wydyr

 

Though they tried, they never found the road again. There was no sign anywhere of the golden horses; panic had taken them far away. So Will and Bran turned their faces towards the shining tower and tramped over the rough reedy grass of the pastureland, through clumps of gorse on the firm ground and soggy patches of marsh on lower land where the water still lay. All the Lost Land was low: a coastal plain, with the sweep of Cardigan Bay at their left hand and the mountains rising hazily purple-brown far inland, to the right. Somewhere ahead. Will realised, the River Dyfi must run, towards a mouth considerably further out to sea than the one he had known before. It was as though all the coast of their own time had been given an extra half-mile stretch on its seaward side.

 

'Or rather,' he said aloud, 'given back the land it lost.'

 

Bran looked at him with a half-smile of understanding. 'Except that it hasn't been lost yet, has it?' he said. 'Because we've gone back in time.'

 

Will said pensively, 'Have we?'

 

'Well of course we have!' Bran stared at him.

 

'I suppose so. Back, forward, forward, back.' Will's mind was drifting. He looked out to a sweep of yellow irises among the reeds of a boggy area they had been carefully skirting. 'Pretty, aren't they? Just like on the farm, near the river.'

 

'We must be getting near a river ourselves,' Bran said, eying him a little uncertainly. 'Very wet, it is. I'm parched.'

 

'Listen!' Will said. 'Can you hear running water?'

 

'Won't be any good to us even if it is - probably brackish,' Bran said, but he cocked his head to listen. Then he nodded. 'Yes. Up ahead. Past those trees.'

 

They went on. The bright tower loomed higher now, though almost obscured by trees. They could see that it was topped by a banded dome of crystal and gold, exactly like the dome of the king's palace in the city. There was even an identical golden arrow at the very top, pointing out at the sea.

 

Then they were among a group of scrubby willow trees, with the sound of water growing, growing, and suddenly they came upon a reed-fringed stream, moving curiously fast for water on such flat land. Curving round to meet them, it seemed to flow from the direction of the City out to join the River Dyfi on its way to the sea. The water looked clear and cool.

 

'I'm thirsty!' Bran said. 'Cross your fingers.' He dipped one hand in the water and tasted; then made a horrible face.

 

Will groaned in disappointment. 'Salt?'

 

'No,' Bran said, expressionless. 'It's perfectly good.' He dodged "Will's grinning lunge and they both stretched out on the grassy riverbank and drank thirstily, splashing their hot faces until their hair was wet and dripping. In a gentle patch of water on the lee side of a rock Will caught sight of Bran's reflection, and was held by it. Only the glint of the tawny eyes was properly like Bran, for the reflected face was darkened by shade and the wet hair seemed streaked dark and light. Yet somehow Will felt a strange flash of recognition of the whole changed image. He said sharply, 'I've seen you look like that before, somewhere.'

 

'Of course you've seen me before,' Bran said lazily. He put down his head and blew bubbles into the water, breaking the reflection. The water rippled into a hundred different surfaces, glinting, whirling; there seemed all at once a great deal of white in the pattern. Some small warning note rang in Will's mind. He rolled over, and saw against the sky, standing over them, the hooded White Rider on his white horse. Bran brought his head out of the water, spluttering, pulling a green strand of weed from his mouth. He rubbed the water from his eyes, looked up - and was suddenly very still.

 

The White Rider looked down at Will with bright eyes set in a dim white face shadowed by the hood. 'Where is your master. Old One?' The voice was soft and sibilant and puzzlingly familiar, though they knew they had not heard it before.

 

Will said shortly, 'He is not here. As you know.'

 

The White Rider's smile glinted. 'And he told you no doubt that something had prevented him from coming, and you were simple enough to believe him. The lord Merriman is more shrewd than you. Old One. He knows the danger that is here, and takes care not to be exposed to it.'

 

Will lay back deliberately on his elbows. 'And you are more than simple, if you think to afflict me with such talk. The Dark must be in a sad way, to use the tricks of idiots.'

 

The White Rider's back straightened; he seemed indefinably more dangerous than before. 'Go back,' said the soft hissing voice coldly. 'Go back, while you still can.'

 

'You cannot make us go,' Will said.

 

'No,' said the White Rider. 'But we can make you wish you had never come. Especially ,..' his gleaming eyes flickered towards Bran... 'especially the white-haired boy.'

 

Will said softly, 'You know who he is. Rider. He has a right to a name.'

 

'He is not yet in his power,' the White Rider said, 'and until then he is nothing. And therefore he will be nothing forever, no more than a child of your century, for without your master you have no hope of gaining the sword. Go back, Old One, go back!' The soft voice rose to a nasal, ringing demand, and the white horse shifted uneasily. 'Go back,' the Rider said, 'and we will give you safe passage out of the Lost Land to your own time.'

 

The horse shifted again. Exclaiming in irritation, the White Rider gave rein and wheeled it round in a wide circle to calm its restlessness.

 

'Look!' Bran whispered. He was staring at the ground.

 

Will looked down. Under the high fierce sun, his shadow and Bran's lay short and stumpy together on the uneven grass; but as the White Rider and his horse curved back towards them, the grass beneath the four hooves lay bright and unshaded.

 

'Ah yes,' Will said softly. 'The Dark casts no shadow.'

 

The White Rider said, clear and confident, 'You will go back.'

 

Will stood up. 'We will not go back. Rider. We have come for the sword.' '

 

"The sword is neither for us nor for you. We shall let you go, in safety, and the sword will stay with its maker.'

 

'Its maker made it for the Light,' Will said, 'and when we come for it, he will give it to us. And we shall then indeed go away in safety, my lord, whether the Dark allows it or not.'

 

The lord in the white cloak looked down at him, his womanish mouth relaxed into a strange, unnerving sneer of relief. 'If that is what you expect from the Land,' he said, 'then you are such fools that we have nothing to fear from you.'

 

And without another word, he turned his horse's head and trotted away beside the curving river, out of sight behind the trees.

 

There was a silence. The water murmured.

 

Bran scrambled to his feet, looking uneasily after the Rider. 'What did he mean?'

 

'I don't know. But I didn't like it.' Will shivered suddenly. 'The Dark is all around us. Can you feel it?'

 

'A little,' Bran said. 'Not really, not the way you do. I feel just... this is a sad place.'

 

'Home of a sad king.' Will looked around. 'Should we follow the river?'

 

'Looks like it.' They could see the dome and the golden pointing arrow of the Castle reaching up out of the trees, past the curve round which the river disappeared.

 

The riverbank was grassy; there was no path, but no trees or bushes grew out to impede their way. The river itself remained narrow, perhaps twenty feet across, but its bed between the coarse grass of the banks grew broader and broader, a shining expanse of sand. It was clear golden sand now, without the murkiness of mud.

 

'Tide's low,' Bran said, seeing Will look at it. 'Like the Dyfi. That sand'll be covered when the tide starts coming in, and the river will grow twice its size. It's beginning to, already. Look.'

 

He pointed; Will saw the water eddying in the river, as the direction of its flow began to change. The main stream in the centre still flowed out to the sea, but at either side the tidal flow from the sea came creeping in..

 

'Couldn't drink from it now,' Bran said. 'Too salt.'

 

The river broadened as they walked farther, and the incoming tide grew more powerful; on the farther bank the trees were smaller and more sparse. They had an occasional glimpse of the broad estuary beyond the scrub and pasture, and the mountains rising far back. Then all at once they saw a square brown sail, and foaming towards them on the tidal current came a boat. Its sail bellied out at right angles to the mast between two sturdy wooden yards; almost at once these clattered to the deck, and the sail came down.

 

The boat swung towards the bank beside them. Will peered in astonishment at the figure furling the sail.

 

'It's Gwion!'

 

Gwion, lean and black-clad, leapt up nimbly into the bow with a line, and jumped ashore as the boat nudged the bank. He glanced at Will and Bran, his familiar smile breaking above the neat grey beard; then called something in Welsh over his shoulder to the boat. A chunky man with black hair and a red-brown face stood there at the long tiller behind the single stubby mast; it was a broad-beamed boat, not unlike a ship's lifeboat. The man called back to Gwion. Will looked enquiringly at Bran.

 

'About mooring the boat,' Bran said. 'And catching the tide, though I - tafla 'r rhaff yna i mi,' he said suddenly to Gwion, reaching for a second line thrown from the boat, and together they moored her fore and aft to a pair of trees, swaying in the river as the tide washed by.

 

'Well done to be here safe,' Gwion said, a hand pressing each on the shoulder. 'Now then, come on.' He set off at once along the riverbank, at a smart pace.

 

Will followed; he felt as though a great knot of tension had been loosed between his shoulder blades.

 

'Explain, explain,' said Bran, lengthening his stride to keep up. 'How did you get here? Why the boat? How did you know where to find us, and when?'

 

Gwion smiled at him. 'When you are in your full power, Bran Davies of Clwyd, you will be confident as Will here and not bother to ask such questions. I am simply here, because you will need me. And thus I break the law of the Lost Land, which is to have no dealing with either Light or Dark when they are in conflict. As I shall go on breaking that law, I have no doubt, until the tail-end of Time. Gently, now ...' His voice dropped and he slowed his pace, stretching both arms sideways to hold them back.

 

They had come to an end of the scattering of wind-curved oak and pine that fringed this edge of the river. Before them now was the Castle of the Lost Land, a shining tower rising over a circle of tall trees.

 

Gwion was suddenly sober; he dropped his arms, and stood for a moment as if he had forgotten Will, Bran, himself and everything except the sight of the lonely glittering tower there before him.

 

'Caer Wydyr,' he said softly, almost whispering. 'As beautiful as it has always been. And my great grieving king shut away inside never seeing its beauty. With indeed no one at all, in all the Lost Land, able to see its beauty except the Lords of the Dark.'

 

Will looked all around, restlessly. 'And they are everywhere, and yet not to be seen.'

 

'Everywhere,' Gwion said. 'Among the guardian trees. But they cannot harm the trees, just as they cannot touch the king or his castle.'

 

The great trees grew round the tower in an irregular circle, lapping it with their leaves and branches; it rose from them like an island from a green sea.

 

'Seven trees, the Lady said.' Bran turned to Will. 'Seven trees. Just as the seven Sleepers woke over Llyn Mwyngil, once before our eyes, to ride away into tomorrow.' The tawny eyes were glittering in his pale face; he stared all around, unafraid, as if in challenge, caught up for a moment in a feverish confidence Will had not seen before.

 

Will said slowly, 'But there were six Sleepers.'

 

'Seven there will be,' Bran said, 'seven at the end. And not then Sleepers by name, but Riders, like the Lords of the Dark.'

 

'Here is the first tree,' Gwion said. His voice was without expression, but Will felt he was deliberately turning the talk aside. Facing them, close to the river, was a crowded clump of slender trunks, green-barked, with broad round dancing leaves.

 

'Y gwernen,' Bran said. 'Alder. Growing with its feet wet, the way it does in our valley too, with John Rowlands cursing it up and down for a weed.'

 

Gwion broke three small twigs from an alder branch, taking each at the joint where it would not bend or fray. 'A weed-wood sometimes perhaps, but a wood that will neither split nor decay. The tree of fire, is alder. There is in it the power of fire to free the earth from water. And that we may need. Here.' He gave each of them a twig and went on, towards the broad sweeping canopy, slender-branched, long-leafed, of a willow tree. Again he broke off three sprays and held out two.

 

'Willow, the enchanter's tree,' Will said, his mind flickering a long way back to a certain ancient book shown him by Merriman when he was learning how to use the gifts of an Old One. 'Strong as a young lion, pliant as a loving woman, and bitter to the taste, as all enchantment in the end must be.' He smiled wryly at Gwion. 'They taught me my trees once, a while ago.'

 

Gwion said quietly, 'So they did indeed. Tell me the next.'

 

'Birch,' said Will. A great knotted white tree rose before them, hard catkins dancing from its long thin brown twigs. Beneath the fluttering green leaves it was an old, old tree, with white-spotted scarlet toadstools growing between its roots and the long self-healed split of an ancient wound bringing the first signs of decay to its trunk.

 

Bran said in unthinking surprise, 'I never saw a birch tree out here before.' Then he looked at Will and grinned, mocking himself. 'No - nor a great glass tower either, nor a may-tree growing from a roof.'

 

'You say nothing foolish,' said Gwion mildly, giving them twigs from the birch tree. 'In this my time it is warmer and drier here in Wales than in yours, and we have forests of alder and birch and pine trees, where you have only oaks and the foreign trees that will be brought in by new men. And those' - he paused for an instant - 'not in quite the same place as these trees of my day.'

 

A kind of terror caught at Will's mind for a moment as he realised what Gwion must mean; but the Welshman drew them swiftly on, past the big birch tree, and suddenly the glass tower, Caer Wydyr, was facing them, visible for the first time from bottom to top, and they saw that it rose not from the ground, from the golden sand and green bank of the estuary, but from a great jagged rock. The stone was unfamiliar; it was neither the spangled grey of granite nor the grey-blue of slate, but a deep blue-black, studded here and there with bright slabs of white quartz. And they saw now that the sides of the tower itself were built too of a glassy rocklike quartz, white, translucent, with a strange milky glow. Slits of windows were set into the circling walls, here and there, and the surface was totally smooth.

 

'Is there no door?' Bran said.

 

Gwion gave no answer, but led them over the long coarse grass towards two other full, massive trees. The first was not tall, but broad and spreading, with the blunt rounded leaves and budding feathery nuts of half the hedges of England and Wales.

 

'Hazel for healing,' Gwion said, taking three twigs.

 

'And for feeding starving travellers,' said Bran.

 

Gwion laughed. 'Were they good, then?'

 

'Marvellous. And the apples too.'

 

Will said remembering, 'Apple is another of the trees.'

 

'But first, holly.' Gwion turned to a forbidding dark mound of a tree with a smooth grey trunk, its glossy dark green leaves sharp-spined on the lower, branches and mild ovals above. He picked only the twigs with prickled leaves, and again handed them one each.

 

'And from the apple,' he said, smiling, 'you may take fruit as well. But I must be the one to pluck the twigs, from every tree.'

 

'Why?' Bran said, as they went on through the grass.

 

'Because otherwise,' Gwion said simply, 'the tree would cry out, and the law would come into force, by which neither Light nor Dark may make any move for their own ends within the Lost Land.' He paused for a moment, looking at them intently, fingering the neat dappled grey beard. His voice was grave. 'Make no mistake now, the Lost Land is not a gentle place. There is a hardness here, and an indifference to all emotions other than those belonging to the Land, that is another face of the beauty of the rose garden, and the skill of the craftsmen, the makers. Do not underestimate that.'

 

Bran said, 'But only the Dark really stands in our way.'

 

Gwion tilted his chin in a curious arrogant motion, yet with lines of pain clear about the mouth. He said quietly, 'Where do you think the Mari Llwyd was called from, to drive you out of your wits almost, Bran Davies? Who do you think devised the mirrored maze? What is it that faces you now in the untasted despair of the task that is almost impossible, the task of reaching the Lost King and his crystal sword? Do you think the Dark has much to do with all this? Oh no. Here the Dark is next to helpless, compared to the powers that belong to this place. It is the Lost Land that you pit yourself against here, with all to win or all to lose.'

 

'And that is the Wild Magic,' Will said slowly. 'Or something very close.'

 

'A form of it,' Gwion said. 'And more besides.'

 

Bran was standing uncertain, blinking at him. 'And you are part of it?'

 

'Ah,' Gwion said reflectively. 'I am a renegade part, going my own way. And although I love my own land most deeply, no good will come to me here.' He turned his broad smile on Bran suddenly like a beam of warmth, nodding ahead. 'Look there - go on, help yourself.'

 

An ancient, sprawling apple tree curved to the ground before them like a bent-backed ancient man; it was the only tree that grew low and spreading, and did not tower above their heads. Small yellow apples, and others smaller yet but bright green, studded its dark branches among the sparse leaves. Bran stared. 'Last year's apples as well as this year's?' He pulled off a yellow apple and bit into its juicy hardness.

 

Gwion chuckled. 'Two years they hang there sometimes. This is a pippin from a long time before your own, remember. There are many things in your own day that were not dreamed of, except by Old Ones, in this age when the Land was lost. But equally there were once other remarkable things that have vanished forever, lost with the Land.'

 

Will said gently, 'Forever?' He picked a yellow apple and held it up, his eyes smiling at Gwion.

 

Gwion looked back at him with a strange faraway look on his strong bearded face. 'For ever and ever, we say when we are young, or in our prayers. Twice, we say it. Old One, do we not? For ever and ever ... so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time.'

 

Bran stood turning bis pale face from one to the other of them, chewing his apple, saying nothing.

 

Will said, 'And here we stand in a time long gone, that has not yet come. Here.'

 

Bran said suddenly, unexpectedly, 'I have been here before.'

 

'Yes,' Gwion said. 'You were born here. Among many trees like this one.'

 

Will glanced up quickly, but the white-haired boy said nothing more. Nor did Gwion, but moved forward and broke three blackish gnarled twigs from the old apple tree.

 

A voice came from behind their backs instead: a soft voice, with an unidentifiable accent to it. 'And the boy who was born here may well find himself staying here - for ever and ever.' A malicious mockery sharpened the tone, flicking like a whip. 'And that is a very long time, my friends, however metaphysical we may become about its meaning.'

 

Will turned slowly, deliberately, to face the tall dark-cloaked figure seated on the great black stallion. The Black Rider had put back his hood; the sunlight glinted on his thick chestnut hair, with its reddish glitter like the fur of a fox, and his bright eyes blazed like blue coals. Behind him, further away, other mounted figures stood silently waiting, riders all in black or all in white, one beside every tree and others scattered further back than Will could plainly see.

 

'There are no more warnings now. Old One,' the Black Rider said. 'Now it will be a matter of simple challenge, and threat. And of promise.'

 

Gwion said, his voice strong and deep, 'Dark promises have no force in this land, my Lord.'

 

The Black Rider glanced down at him as he might have glanced at a dog, or a toddling child. He said contemptuously, 'It is wiser to fear the word of a Lord of the Dark than to heed that of a minstrel to a lost king.'

 

Premonition prickled like some fast-crawling creature all across Will's body; it sang in his mind: Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word ... But Gwion showed no hint of

reaction; he simply moved forward, as if the Black Rider had not been there, and strode past him to the enormous sturdy oak tree in whose shade the dark figure stood.

 

'No leaf-collecting here, little player,' the Rider said mockingly. 'The king of trees is out of your reach, I think.'

 

The warning shudder ran through Will even more strongly. Gwion's face was impassive. Carefully and with dignity he reached up one lean brown arm to its full length; caught a jagged-leaved branch, snapped it, and broke it into three.

 

The Rider said sharply, 'I promise you, minstrel, that if you get into that tower, you will never come out again.' They saw the dreadful scar on the side of his face as he turned his head.

 

'You can do nothing to prevent us, my lord,' Will said. Drawing Bran with him, he went towards Gwion and the great oak.

 

The Black Rider relaxed suddenly, smiling. 'Oh, I have no need,' he said, and slowly he eased his marvellous night-black stallion to sidestep away so that there was a clear view of the rearing glass tower before Will and Bran.

 

Will stopped, with a groan of dismay that he could not hide. The Black Rider gave a high snickering laugh. It was all too plain now what he had meant.

 

The great door of Caer Wydyr was visible at last, high on the rocky base at the top of a steep rough-hewn flight of steps. But it was a door barred against entry by an enchantment Will could never have imagined. Before it, spinning so fast that it was like a bright disc, hung a gigantic wheel. There was no axle, nor any kind of support. The wheel hung there in the air, deadly, forbidding approach, flashing round and round with a speed that gave out a menacing hum.

 

Bran said in a whisper, 'No!'

 

From the Lords of the Dark on their black and white horses, stirring among the trees, there came a rustling of mockery, of malice satisfied. The Black Rider laughed again, an unpleasant menacing sound.

 

Swinging round in hopeless confusion, Will caught Gwion's bright eyes gazing at him, holding him, gleaming over the strong face and the strange dark stripe of its grey beard. Saying: I must tell you but I cannot tell you - think -