The Grey King

Susan Cooper © 1975

Book 4 of 5 in "The Dark is Rising" series

Scanned August 2002 reader51 v1.0

Although all the characters in this book are fictitious, the places are real. I have however taken certain liberties with the geography of the Dysynni Valley and Tal y Llyn, and there are no real farms where I have made Clwyd, Prichard's and Ty-Bont stand.

The Brenin Llwyd I did not invent.

I am grateful to the Rev. Kenneth Francis, Mr J. L. Jones and Mrs Eira Crook for kindly checking my Welsh.

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On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,

Must the youngest open the oldest hills

Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.

There fire shall fly from the raven boy,

And the silver eyes that see the wind,

And the Light shall have the harp of gold.

By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie,

On Cadfan's Way where the kestrels call;

Though grim from the Grey King shadows fall,

 Yet singing the golden harp shall guide

To break their sleep and bid them ride.

When light from the lost land shall return,

Six Sleepers shall ride, six Signs shall burn,

And where the midsummer tree grows tall

By Pendragon's sword the Dark shall fall.

Y maent yr mynyddoedd yn canu,

ac y mae'r arglwyddes yn dod.

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Contents

Prologue

Part One: The Golden Harp

The Oldest Hills

Cadfan's Way

The Raven Boy

Grey Fox

Fire on the Mountain

Bird Rock

Eyes That See the Wind

Part Two: The Sleepers

The Girl from the Mountains

The Grey King

The Pleasant Lake

The Warestone

The Cottage on the Moor

The Waking

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 Prologue

'Are you awake, Will? Will? Wake up, it's time for your medicine, love...'

The face swung like a pendulum to and fro; rose high up in a pink blur; dropped again; divided into six pink blurs, all of them spinning madly like wheels. He closed his eyes. He could feel sweat cold on his forehead, panic cold in his mind. I've lost it. I've forgotten! Even in darkness the world spun round. There was a great buzzing in his head like rushing water, until for a moment the voice broke through it again.

'Will! Just for a moment, wake up...'

It was his mother's voice. He knew, but could not focus. The darkness whirled and roared. I've lost something. It's gone. What was it? It was terribly important, I must

remember it, I must!. He began to struggle, reaching for consciousness, and a long way off heard himself groan.

'Here we go.' Another voice. The doctor. A firm arm, propping his shoulders; cold metal at his lips, a liquid tipped deftly down his throat. Automatically he swallowed. The world wildly spun. Panic came flooding again. A few faint words flashed through his mind and away like a snatch of music; his memory clutched, grasping - 'On the day of the dead -'

Mrs Stanton stared down anxiously at the white face, the dark-smudged closed eyes, the damp hair. 'What did he say?'

Suddenly Will sat upright, eyes wide and staring. 'On the day of the dead -' He looked at her, pleading, without recognition, "That's all I can remember! It's gone! There was something I had to remember, a thing I had to do, it mattered more than anything and I've lost it! I've forgotten -' His face crumpled and he dropped back helplessly, tears running down his cheeks. His mother leaned over him, her arms round him, murmuring soothingly as if he were a baby. In a few moments he began to relax, and to breathe more easily. She looked up in distress.

'Is he delirious?'

The doctor shook his head, his round face compassionate. 'No, he's past that. Physically, the worst is over. This is more like a bad dream, an hallucination - though he may indeed have lost something from his memory. The mind can be very much bound up with the health of the body, even in children... Don't worry. He'll sleep now. And every day will be better from now on.'

Mrs Stanton sighed, stroking her youngest son's damp forehead. 'I'm very grateful. You've come so often - there aren't many doctors who -'

'Poof, poof,' said little Dr Armstrong briskly, taking Will's wrist between finger and thumb. 'We're all old friends. He was a very, very sick boy for a while. Going to be limp for a long time, too - even youngsters don't bounce back from this kind of thing very fast. I'll be back, Alice. But anyway, bed for at least another week, and no school for a month after that. Can you send him away somewhere? What about that cousin of yours in Wales, who took Mary at Easter?'

'Yes, he could go there. I'm sure he could. It's nice in October, too, and the sea air... I'll write to them.'

Will moved his head on the pillow, muttering, but did not wake.

Part One: The Golden Harp

The Oldest Hills

He remembered Mary had said, 'They all speak Welsh, most of the time. Even Aunt Jen.'

'Oh, dear,' said Will.

'Don't worry,' his sister said. 'Sooner or later they switch to English, if they see you're there. Just remember to be patient. And they'll be extra kind because of your having been ill. At least they, were to me, after my mumps.'

So now Will stood patiently alone on the windy grey platform of the small station of Tywyn, in a thin drizzle of October rain waiting while two men in the navy-blue railway uniform argued earnestly in Welsh. One of them was small and wizened, gnome-like; the other had a soft, squashy look, like a man made of dough.

The gnome caught sight of Will. 'Beth sy'n bod?' he said.

'Er - excuse me,' Will said. 'My uncle said he'd meet me off the train, in the station yard, but there's no one outside. Could you tell me if there's anywhere else he might have meant?'

The gnome shook his head.

'Who's your uncle, then?' inquired the soft-faced man.

'Mr Evans, from Bryn-Crug. Clwyd Farm,' Will said. The gnome chuckled gently. 'David Evans will be a bit late, boy bach. You have a nice dreamer for an uncle. David Evans will be late when the Last Trump sounds. You just wait a while. On holiday, is it?' Bright dark eyes peered inquisitively into his face.

'Sort of. I've had hepatitis. The doctor said I had to come away to convalesce.'

'Ah!' The man nodded his head sagely. 'You look a bit peaky, yes. Come to the right place, though. The air on this coast is very relaxing, they say, very relaxing. Even at this time of year.'

.A clattering roar came suddenly from beyond the ticket office, and through the barrier Will saw a mud-streaked Land-Rover drive into the yard. But the figure that came bounding out of it was not that of the small neat farmer he vaguely remembered; it was a wiry, gangling young man, jerkily thrusting out his hand.

'Will, is it? Hallo. Da sent me to meet you. I'm Rhys.'

'How do you do.' Will knew he had two grown-up Welsh cousins, old as his oldest brothers, but he had never set eyes on either of them.

Rhys scooped up his suitcase as if it had been a matchbox. "This all you have? Let's be off, then.' He nodded to the railwaymen. 'Sut 'dach chi?'

'lawn diolch,' said the gnome. 'Caradog Prichard was asking for you or your father, round about, this morning. Something about dogs.'

'A pity you haven't seen me at all, today,' Rhys said.

The gnome grinned. He took Will's ticket. 'Get yourself healthy now, young man.'

'Thank you, 'Will said.

Perched up in the front of the Land-Rover, he peered out at the little grey town as the windscreen wipers tried in vain, twitch-creak, twitch-creak, to banish the fine misty rain from the glass. Deserted shops lined the little street, and a few bent figures in raincoats scurried by; he saw a church, a small hotel, more neat houses. Then the road was widening and they were out between trim hedges, with open fields beyond, and green hills rising against the sky: a grey sky, featureless with mist. Rhys seemed shy; he drove with no attempt at talking - though the engine made so much noise that conversation would have been hard in any case. Past gaggles of silent cottages they drove, the boards that announced VACANCY or BED AND BREAKFAST swinging forlornly now that most of the holiday visitors were gone.

Rhys turned the car inland, towards the mountains, and almost at once Will had a strange new feelings of enclosure, almost of menace. The little road was narrow here, like a tunnel, with its high grass banks and looming hedges like green walls on either side. Whenever they passed the gap where a hedge opened to a field through a gate, he could see the green-brown bulk of hillsides rearing up at the grey sky. And ahead, as bends in the road showed open sky briefly through the trees, a higher fold of grey hills loomed in the distance, disappearing into ragged cloud. Will felt that he was in a part of Britain like none he had ever known before: a secret, enclosed place, with powers hidden in its shrouded centuries at which he could not begin to guess. He shivered.

In the same moment, as Rhys swung round a tight comer towards a narrow bridge, the Land-Rover gave a strange jerking leap and lurched down to one side, towards the hedge. Braking hard, Rhys hauled at the wheel and managed to stop at an angle that seemed to indicate one wheel was in the ditch.

'Damn!' he said with force, opening the door.

Will scrambled after him. 'What happened?'

'There is what happened.' Rhys pointed a long finger at the nearside front wheel, its tyre pressed hopelessly flat against a rock jutting from the hedge. 'Just look at that. Ripped it right open, and so thick those tyres are, you would never think -' His light, rather husky voice was high with astonishment.

'Was the rock lying in the road?'

Rhys shook his curly head. 'Goes under the hedge. Huge, it is, that's just one end ... I used to sit on that rock when I was half your size...' Wonder had banished his shyness. 'What made the car jump, then? That's the funny thing, seemed to jump, she did, right on to it, sideways. It wasn't the tyre blowing, that feels quite different...' He straightened, brushing away the rain that spangled his eyebrows. 'Well, well. A wheel change, now.'

Will said hopefully, 'Can I help?'

Rhys looked down at him: at the shadowed eyes and the pale face beneath the thick, straight brown hair. He grinned suddenly, directly at Will for the first time since they had met; it made his face look quite different, untroubled and young. 'Here you come down after being so ill, to be put together again, and I am to have you out in the rain changing an old wheel? Mam would have fifty fits. Back in the warm with you, go on.' He moved round to the rear door of the square little car, and began pulling out tools.

Will clambered obediently up into the front of the Land-Rover again; it seemed a warm, cosy little box, after the chill wind blowing the drizzle into his face out on the road. There was no sound, there among the open fields under the looming hills, but the soft whine of the wind in telephone wires, and an occasional deep baaa from a distant sheep. And the rattle of a spanner; Rhys was undoing the bolts that secured the spare wheel to the back door.

Will leaned his head back against the seat, closing his eyes. His illness had kept him in bed for a long time, in a long blur of ache and distress and fleeting anxious faces, and although he had been back on his feet for more than a week, he still grew tired very easily. It was frightening sometimes to catch himself breathless and exhausted, after something as ordinary as climbing a flight of stairs.

He sat relaxed, letting the soft sounds of the wind and the calling sheep drift through his mind. Then another sound came. Opening his eyes, he saw in the side mirror another car slowing to a stop behind them.

A man climbed out, thickset, chunky, wearing a flat cap, and a raincoat flapping over rubber boots; he was grinning. For no good reason, Will instantly disliked the grin. Rhys opened the back of the Land-Rover again, to reach for the jack, and Will heard the newcomer greet him in Welsh; the words were unintelligible, but they had an unmistakable jeering tone. All this short conversation, indeed, lay as open in meaning as if Will had understood every word.

The man was clearly mocking Rhys for having to change a wheel in the rain. Rhys answered, curtly but without crossness. The man looked deliberately into the car, walking forward to peer in at the window; he stared at Will, unsmiling, with strange small light-lashed eyes, and asked Rhys something. When Rhys answered, one of the words was 'Will.' The man in the raincoat said something else, with a sneer in it this time directed at both of them, and then without warning he broke into an astonishing tirade of rapid, bitter speech, the words pouring out flurried and guttural like a churning river in flood. Rhys appeared to pay no attention at all. At last the man paused, angry. He swung round and marched back to his car; then he drove slowly on past them, still staring at Will as he went by. A black-and-white dog was looking out over the man's shoulder, and Will saw that the car was in fact a van, grey and windowless at the back.

He slipped across into the driver's seat and pulled open the window; the Land-Rover lurched gently up into the air beneath him as Rhys heaved on the jack.

'Who was that?' Will said.

'Fellow called Caradog Prichard, from up the valley.' Rhys spat enigmatically on his hands, and heaved again. 'A farmer.'

'He could have stayed and helped you.'

'Ha!' Rhys said. 'Caradog Prichard is not well known for helping.'

'What did he say?'

'He let me know how amusing it was to see me stuck. And some things about a disagreement we have. Of no importance. And asked who you were.' Rhys spun his spanner, loosening the wheel-bolts, and glanced up with a shy conspiratorial grin. 'A good job our mothers were not listening, I was not polite. I said you were my cousin and none of his bloody business.'

'Was he cross?'

Rhys paused reflectively. 'He said - We shall see about that.'

"Will looked up the valley road where the van had disappeared. "That's a funny thing to say.'

'Oh,' Rhys said, 'that is Caradog. His hobby is to make people feel uncomfortable. Nobody likes him, except his dogs, and he doesn't even like them.' He tugged at the injured wheel. 'Sit still up there now. We shan't be long.'

By the time he climbed back into the driving seat, rubbing his hands on an oily rag, the fine drizzle had turned to real rain; the dark hair was curling wet over his head. 'Well,' Rhys said. 'This is nice old weather to greet you, I must say. But it won't last. We shall have a good bit of sun yet, off and on, before the winter bites down on us.'

Will gazed out at the mountains, dark and distant, swinging into view as they drove along the road crossing the valley. Grey-white cloud hung ragged round the highest hills, their tops invisible behind the mist. He said, "The cloud's all tattered round the tops of the mountains. Perhaps it's breaking up.'

Rhys looked out casually. 'The breath of the Grey King? No, I'm sorry to tell you. Will, that's supposed to be a bad sign.'

Will sat very still, a great rushing sound in his ears; he gripped the edge of his seat until the metal bit at his fingers. 'What did you call it?'

'The cloud? Oh, when it hangs ragged like that we call it the breath of the Brenin Llwyd. The Grey King. He is supposed to live up there on the high land. It's just one of the old stories.' Rhys glanced sideways at him and then braked suddenly; the Land-Rover slowed almost to a halt. 'Will! Are you all right? White as a ghost, you look. Are you

feeling bad?'

'No. No. It was just -' Will was staring out at the grey mass of the hills. 'It was just ... the Grey King, the Grey King ... it's part of something I used to know, something I was supposed to remember, for always... I thought I'd lost it. Perhaps - perhaps it's going to come back...'

Rhys crashed the car back into gear. 'Oh,' he called cheerfully through the noise, 'we'll get you better, you just wait. Anything can happen in these old hills.'

Part One: The Golden Harp

Cadfan's Way

'You see?' said Aunt Jen. 'I told you it would clear up.'

Will swallowed his last mouthful of bacon. You wouldn't think it was the same country. Marvellous.'

Morning sunshine streamed like banners through the windows of the long farmhouse kitchen. It glinted on the blue slate slabs of the floor, on the willow-pattern china set out on the enormous black dresser; on the shelf of beaming Toby jugs above the stove. A rainbow danced over the low ceiling, cast up in a sun-spell from the handle of the glass milk-jug.

'Warm, too,' said Aunt Jen. 'We are going to have an Indian summer for you. Will. And fatten you up a bit too, my dear. Have some more bread.'

'It's lovely. I haven't eaten so much for months.' Will watched small Aunt Jen with affection as she bustled about the kitchen. Strictly speaking, she was not his aunt at all, but a cousin of his mother's; the two had grown up as close friends, and still exchanged quantities of letters. But Aunt Jen had left Buckinghamshire long before; it was one of the more romantic legends in the family, the tale of how she had come to Wales for a holiday, fallen shatteringly in love with a young Welsh farmer, and never gone home again. She even sounded Welsh herself now - and looked it, with her small, cosily plump form and bright dark eyes.

'Where's Uncle David?' he said.

'Out in the yard somewhere. This is a busy time of the year with the sheep, the hill farms send their yearlings down for the winter... he has to drive to Tywyn soon, he wondered

if you would like to go too. Go to the beach, you could, in this sunshine.'

'Super.'

"No swimming, mind,' said Aunt Jen hastily.

Will laughed. 'I know, I'm fragile. I'll be careful... I'd love to go. I can send Mum a card, saying I got here in one piece.'

A clatter and a shadow came in the doorway; it was Rhys, dishevelled, pulling off a sweater. 'Morning, Will. Have you left us some breakfast?'

'You're late,' Will said cheekily.

'Late, is it?' Rhys glared at him in mock fury. 'Just hear him - and us out since six with only an old cup of tea inside. Tomorrow morning, John, we will pull this young monkey out of bed and take him with us.'

Behind him a deep voice chuckled. Will's attention was caught by a face he had not seen before.

'Will, this is John Rowlands. The best man with sheep in Wales.'

'And with the harp, too,' Aunt Jen said.

It was a lean face, with cheekbones carved high in it, and many lines everywhere, creased upward now round the eyes by smiling. Dark eyes, brown as coffee; thinning dark hair, streaked with grey at the sides; the well-shaped, modelled mouth of the Celt. For a moment Will stared, fascinated; there was a curious indefinable strength in this John Rowlands, even though he was not at all a big man.

'Croeso, Will,' said John Rowlands. 'Welcome to Clwyd. I heard about you from your sister, last spring.'

'Good heavens,' said Will in unthinking astonishment, and everyone laughed.

'Nothing bad,' Rowlands said, smiling. 'How is Mary?'

'She's fine,' Will said. 'She said she had a marvellous time here, last Easter. I was away too, then. In Cornwall.'

He fell silent for a moment, his face suddenly abstracted and blank; John Rowlands looked at him swiftly, then sat down at the table where Rhys was already poised over bacon and eggs. Will's uncle came in, carrying a batch of papers.

'Cwpanaid o de, cariad?' said Aunt Jen, when she saw him.

'Diolch yn fawr,' said David Evans, taking the cup of tea she held out to him. 'And then I must be off to Tywyn. You want to come, Will?'

'Yes, please.'

'We may be a couple of hours.' The sound of his words was very precise always; he was a small, neatly-made man, sharp-featured, but with an unexpectedly vague, reflective look sometimes in his dark eyes. 'I have to go to the bank, and to see Llew Thomas, and there will be the new tyre for the Land-Rover. The car that jumped up in the air and got itself a puncture.'

Rhys, with his mouth full, made a strangled noise of protest. 'Now, Da,' he said, swallowing. 'I know how it sounded, but really I am not mad, there was nothing that could have made her swerve over to the side like that and hit the rock. Unless the steering rod is going.'

'There is nothing wrong with the steering of that car,' David Evans said.

'Well, then!' Rhys was all elbows and indignation. 'I tell you she just lurched over for no reason at all. Ask Will.'

'It's true,' Will said. "The car did just sort of jump sideways and hit that rock. I don't see what could have made it jump, unless it had run over a loose stone in the road- but that would have had to be a pretty big stone. And there was no sign of one anywhere.'

'Great allies, you two, already, I can see,' said his uncle. He drained his teacup, gazing at them over the top; Will was not sure whether or not he was laughing at them. 'Well, well, I will have the steering checked anyway. John, Rhys, now that extra fencing for the fridd -'

They slid into Welsh, unthinking. It did not bother Will. He was occupied in trying to scorn away a small voice at the back of his mind, an irrational small voice with an irrational suggestion. 'If they want to know what made the car jump,' this part of his mind was whispering at him, 'why don't they ask Caradog Prichard?'

David Evans dropped Will at a small newsagent's shop, where he could buy postcards, and chugged off to leave the Land-Rover at a garage. Will bought a card showing a sinister dark lake surrounded by very Welsh-looking mountains, wrote on it 'I GOT HERE! Everyone sends their love,' and sent it off to his mother from the Post Office, a solemn and unmistakable red brick building on a comer of Tywyn High Street. Then he looked about him, wondering where to go next.

Choosing at random, hoping to see the sea, he turned right up. the narrow curving High Street, Before long he found that there would be no sea this way: nor anything but shops, houses, a cinema with an imposing Victorian front grandly labelled ASSEMBLY ROOMS, and the slate-roofed lychgate of a church.

Will liked investigating churches; before his illness had overtaken him, he and two friends from school had been cycling all round the Thames Valley to make brass rubbings. He turned into the little churchyard, to see if there might be any brasses here.

The church porch was low-roofed, deep as a cave; inside, the church was shadowy and cool, with sturdy white painted walls and massive white pillars. Nobody was there. Will found no brasses for rubbing, but only monuments to unpronounceable benefactors, like Gruffydd ap Adda of Ynysymaengwyn Hall. At the rear of the church, on his way out, he noticed a strange long grey stone set up on end, incised with marks too ancient for him to decipher. He stared at it for a long moment; it seemed like an omen of some kind, though of what significance he had not the least idea. And then, in the porch on his way out, he glanced idly up at the notice-board with its scattering of parish news, and he saw the name: Church of St Cadfan.

The whirling came again in his ears like the wind; staggering, he collapsed on to the low bench in the porch. His mind spun, he was back suddenly in the roaring confusion of his illness, when he had known that something, something most precious, had slipped or been taken away from his memory. Words flickered through his consciousness, without order or meaning, and then a phrase surfaced like a leaping fish: 'On Cadfan's Way where the kestrels call...' His mind seized it greedily, reaching for more. But there was no more. The roaring died away; Will opened his eyes, breathing more steadily, the giddiness draining gradually out of him. He said softly, aloud, 'On Cadfan's Way where the kestrels call ... On Cadfan's Way...' Outside in the sunshine the grey slate tombstones and green grass glimmered, with jewel-glints of light here and there from droplets of rain still clinging to the longest stems from the day before. Will thought, 'On the day of the dead ... the Grey King... there must have been some sort of warning about the Grey King ... and what is Cadfan's Way?'

'Oh,' he said aloud in sudden fury, 'if only I could remember!'

He jumped up and went back to the newsagent's shop. 'Please,' he said, 'is there a guide to the church, or to the town?'

'Nothing on Tywyn,' said the red-cheeked girl of the shop, in her sibilant Welsh lilt. 'Too late in the season, you are,.. but Mr Owen has a leaflet for sale in the church, I think. And there is this, if you like. Full of lovely walks.' She showed him a Guide to North Wales, for thirty-five pence.

'Well,' said Will, counting out his money rather reluctantly. 'I can always take it home afterwards, I suppose.'

'It would make a very nice present,' said the girl earnestly. 'Got some beautiful pictures, it has. And just look at the cover!'

'Thank you,' said Will.

When he peered at the little book, outside, it told him that the Saxons had settled in Tywyn in A.D. 516, round the church built by St Cadfan of Brittany and his holy well, and that the inscribed stone in the church was said to be the oldest piece of written Welsh in existence, and could be translated:

'The body of Cyngen is on the side between where the marks will be. In the retreat beneath the mound is extended Cadfan, said that it should enclose the praise of the earth. May he rest without blemish.' But it said not a word about Cadfan's Way. Nor, when he checked, did the leaflet in the church.

Will thought: it is not Cadfan I want, it is his Way. A way is a road. A way where the kestrels call must be a road over a moor, or a mountain.

It pushed even the seashore out of his mind, when later he walked absentmindedly for a while among the breakwaters of the windy beach. When he met his uncle for the ride back to the farm, he found no help there either.

'Cadfan's Way?' said David Evans. 'You pronounce it Cadvan, by the way; one f is always a v sound in Welsh... Cadfan's Way... No. It does sound a bit familiar, you know. But I couldn't tell you, Will. John Rowlands is the one to ask about things like that. He has a mind like an encyclopedia, does John,' full of old things.'

John Rowlands was out somewhere on the farm, busy, so for the time being Will had to content himself with a much-folded map. He went out with it that afternoon, alone in the sunlit valley, to walk the boundaries of the farm; his uncle had roughly pencilled them in for him. Clwyd was a lowland farm, stretching across most of the valley of the Dysynni River; some of its land was marshy, near the river, and some stretched up the soaring scree-patched side of the mountain, green and grey and bracken-brown. But most was lush green valley land, fertile, and friendly, part of it left new-ploughed since the harvest of this year's crops, and all the rest serving as pasture for square, sturdy Welsh Black cattle. On the mountain land, only sheep grazed. Some of the lower slopes had been ploughed, though even they looked so steep to Will that he wondered how a tractor ploughing them could have kept from rolling over. Above those, nothing grew but bracken, groups of wind-warped scrubby trees, and grass; the mountain reared up to the sky, and the deep aimless call of a sheep came now and then floating down into the still, warm afternoon.

It was by another sound that he found John Rowlands, unexpectedly. As he was walking through one of the Clwyd fields towards the river, with a high wild hedge on one side of him and the dark ploughed soil on the other, he heard a dull, muffled thudding, somewhere ahead. Then suddenly at a curve in the field he saw the figure, moving steadily and rhythmically as if in a slow, deliberate dance. He stopped and watched, fascinated. Rowlands, his shirt half-open and a red kerchief tied round his neck, was making a transformation. He moved gradually along the hedge, first chopping carefully here and there with a murderous tool like a cross between an axe and a pirate's cutlass, then setting this down and hauling and interweaving whatever remained of the long, rank growth. Before him, the hedge grew wild and high, great arms groping out uncontrolled in all directions as the hazel and hawthorn did their best to grow into full-fledged trees. Behind him, as he moved along his relentless swaying way, he left instead a neat fence: scores of beheaded branches bristling waist-high like spears, with every fifth branch bent mercilessly down at right angles and woven in along the rest as if it were part of a hurdle.

Will watched, silent, until Rowlands became aware of him and straightened up, breathing heavily. He pulled the red kerchief loose, wiped his forehead with it and re-tied it loosely round his neck. In his creased brown face, the lines beside the dark eyes turned upwards just a little as he looked at Will.

*I know,' he said, the velvet voice solemn. 'You are thinking, here is this wonderful healthy hedge full of leaves and hawthorn berries, reaching up to the heavens, and here is this man hacking it down like a butcher jointing a sheep, taming it into a horrid little naked fence, all bones and no grace.'

Will grinned. 'Well,' he said. 'Something like that, yes.'

'Ah,' said John Rowlands. He squatted down on his haunches, resting his axe head down on the ground between his knees and leaning on it. 'Duw, it's a good job you came along. I cannot go so fast as I used to. Well, let me tell you now, if we were to leave this lovely wild hedge the way it is now, and has been for too long, it would take over half the field before this time next year. And even though I am cutting off its head and half its body, all these sad bent-over shoots that you see will be sending up so many new arms next spring that you will hardly notice any difference in it at all.'

'Now that you come to mention it,' said Will, 'yes, of course, the hedging is just the same at home, in Bucks. Ifs just that I never actually watched anyone doing it before.'

'Had my eye on this hedge for a year,' John Rowlands said. 'It was missed last winter. Like life it is. Will - sometimes you must seem to hurt something in order to do good for it. But not often a very big hurt, thank goodness.' He got to his feet again. 'You look more healthy already, bachgen. The Welsh sun is good for you,'

Will looked down at the map in his hand. 'Mr Rowlands,' he said, 'can you tell me anything about Cadfan's Way?'

The Welshman had been running one tough brown finger along the edge of his mattock; there was a second's pause in the movement, and then the finger moved on. He said quietly, 'Now what put that into your head, I wonder?'

'I don't really know. I suppose I must have read it somewhere. Is there a Cadfan's Way?'

'Oh, yes, indeed,' John Rowlands said. 'Llwybr Cadfan. No secret about that, though most people these days have forgotten it. I think they have a Cadfan Road in one of the new Tywyn housing estates instead... St Cadfan was a kind of missionary, from France, in the days when Brittany and Cornwall and Wales all had close ties. Fourteen hundred years ago he had his church in Tywyn, and a holy well - and he is supposed to have founded the monastery on Enlli, that is in English Bardsey, as well. You know Bardsey Island, where the bird-watchers go, out there off the tip of North Wales? People used to visit Tywyn and go on to Bardsey - and so, they say, there is an old pilgrims' road that goes over the mountain from Machynlleth to Tywyn, past Abergynolwyn. And along the side of this valley, no doubt. Or perhaps higher up. Most of the old ways go along high places, they were safer there. But nobody knows where to find Cadfan's Way now.'

'I see,' said Will. It was more than enough; he knew that now he would be able to find the Way, given time. But increasingly he felt that there was very little time left; that it was urgent for his quest, so oddly lost by his memory, to be accomplished very soon. On the day of the dead... And what was the quest, and where, and why? If only he could

remember ...

John Rowlands turned towards the hedge again. 'Well -'

'I'll see you later,' Will said. "Thank you. I'm trying to walk all round the edge of the farm.'

'Take it gently. That is a long walk for a convalescent, the whole of it.' Rowlands straightened suddenly, pointing a finger at him in warning. 'And if you go up the valley and get to the Craig yr Aderyn end - that way - make sure you check the boundaries on your map, and do not go off your uncle's land. That is Caradog Prichard's farm beyond, and he is not kind with trespassers.'

Will thought of the malicious, light-lashed eyes in the sneering face he had seen from the Land-Rover with Rhys. 'Oh,' he said. 'Caradog Prichard. All right. Thanks. Diolch yn fawr. Is that right?'

John Rowlands's face broke into creases of laughter, 'Not bad,' he said. 'But perhaps you should stick to just diolch.'

The gentle thud of his axe dwindled behind Will and was lost in the insect-hum of the sunny afternoon, with the scattered calls of birds and sheep. The way that Will was going led sideways across the valley, with the grey-green sweep of the mountain rising always before him; it blocked out more and more of the sky as he walked on. Soon he was beginning to climb, and then the bracken began to come in over the grass in a rustling knee-high carpet, with clumps here and there of spiky green gorse, its yellow flowers still bright among the fierce prickling stalks. No hedge climbed the mountain, but a slate-topped drystone wall, curving with every contour, broken now and then by a stile-step low enough for men but too high for sheep.

Will found himself losing breath far more quickly than he would normally have done. As soon as he next came to a humped rock the right size for sitting, he folded thankfully into a panting heap. While he waited for his breath to come properly back, he looked at the map again. The Clwyd farmland seemed to end about halfway up the mountain - but there was, of course, nothing to guarantee that he would come across the old Cadfan's Way before he reached the boundary. He found himself hoping a little nervously that the rest of the mountain above was not Caradog Prichard's land.

Stuffing the map back into his pocket, he went on, higher, through the crackling brown fronds of the bracken. He was climbing diagonally now, as the slope grew steeper. Birds whirred away from him; somewhere high above, a skylark was pouring out its rippling, throbbing song. Then all at once, Will began to have an unaccountable feeling that he was being followed.

Abruptly he stopped, swinging round. Nothing moved. The bracken-brown slope lay still beneath the sunshine, with outcrops of white rock glimmering here and there. A car hummed past on the road below, invisible through trees; he was high above the farm now, looking out over the silver thread of the river to the mountains rising green and grey and brown behind, and at last fading blue into the distance. Further up the valley the mountainside on which he stood was clothed dark green with plantations of spruce trees, and beyond those he could see a great grey-black crag rising, a lone peak, lower than the mountains around it yet dominating all the surrounding land. A few large black birds circled its top; as he watched, they merged together into a shape of a long V, as geese do, and flew unhurriedly away over the mountain in the direction of the sea.

Then from somewhere close, he heard one short sharp bark from a dog.

Will jumped. No dog was likely to be on the mountain alone. Yet there was no sign of another human being anywhere. If someone was near by, why was he hiding himself?

He turned to go on up the slope, and only then did he see the dog. He stood stone-still. It was poised directly above him, alert, waiting; a white dog, white all over with only one small black patch on its back, like a saddle. Except for the curious pattern of colouring, it looked like a traditional Welsh sheep-dog, muscular and sharp-muzzled, with feathered legs and tail: a smaller version of the collie. Will held out his hand. 'Here, boy,' he said. But the dog bared its teeth, and gave a low, threatening growl deep in its throat.

Will took a few tentative steps up the slope, diagonally, in the direction he had been going before. Crouching on its stomach, the dog moved with him, teeth glittering, tongue lolling. The attitude was odd and yet familiar, and suddenly Will realised that he had seen it the evening before in the two dogs on his uncle's farm that had been helping Rhys bring in the cows to be milked. It was the movement of control - the watchful crouch from which a working sheep-dog would spring, to bring to order the animals it was driving in a particular direction.

But where was this dog trying to drive him?

Clearly, there was only one way to find out. Taking a deep breath, Will turned to face the dog and began deliberately clambering straight up the slope. The dog stopped, and the long, low growl began again in its throat; it crouched, back curved as if all four feet were planted like trees in the ground. The snarl of the white teeth said, very plainly: Not this way. But Will, clenching his fists, kept climbing. He shifted direction very slightly so that he would pass close to the dog without touching it. But then unexpectedly, with one short bark, the dog darted towards him, crouching low, and involuntarily Will jumped - and lost his balance. He fell sideways on the steep hillside. Desperately reaching his arms wide to stop himself from rolling headlong down, he slithered and bumped upside-down for a few wild yards, terror loud as a shout in his head, until his fall was checked by something jerking fiercely at his sleeve. He came up against a rock, with a numbing thud.

He opened his eyes. The line where mountain met sky was spinning before him. Very close was the dog, its teeth clamped on the sleeve of his jacket, tugging him back, all warm breath and black nose and staring eyes. And at the sight of the eyes, Will's world spun round and over again so fast that he thought he must still be falling. The roaring was in his ears again, and all things normal became suddenly chaos. For this dog's eyes were like no eyes he had ever seen; where they should have been brown, they were silver-white: eyes the colour of blindness, set in the head of an animal that could see. And as the silver eyes gazed into his, and the dog's breath panted out hot on his face, in a whirling instant Will remembered everything that his illness had taken away from him. He remembered the verses that had been put into his head as guide for the bleak, lone quest he was destined now to follow; remembered who he was and what he was - and recognised the design that under the mask of coincidence had brought him here to Wales.

At the same time another kind of innocence fell away, and he was aware too of immense danger, like a great shadow across the world, waiting for him all through this unfamiliar land of green valleys and dark-misted mountain peaks. He was like a battle leader suddenly given news: suddenly made aware, as he had not been a moment before, that just beyond the horizon a great and dreadful army lay in wait, preparing itself to rise like a huge wave and drown all those who stood in its way.

Trembling with wonder, Will reached across his other arm and fondled the dog's ears. It let go of his sleeve and stood there gazing at him, tongue lolling pink from a pink-rimmed mouth.

'Good dog,' Will said. 'Good dog.' Then a dark figure blotted out the sun, and he rolled abruptly over to sit up and see who stood outlined there against the sky.

A clear Welsh voice said: 'Are you hurt?'

It was a boy. He was dressed neatly in what looked like a school uniform: grey trousers, white shirt, red socks and tie. He had a schoolbag slung over one shoulder, and he seemed to be about the same age as Will. But there was a quality of strangeness about him, as there had been about the dog, that tightened Will's throat and caught him motionless in a wondering stare; for this boy was drained of all colour, like a shell bleached by the summer sun. His hair was white, and his eyebrows. His skin was pale. The effect was so startling that for a wild moment Will found himself wondering whether the hair was deliberately bleached - done on purpose, to create astonishment and alarm. But the idea vanished as swiftly as it had come. The mixture of arrogance and hostility facing him showed plainly that this was not that kind of boy at all.

'I'm all right.' Will stood up, shaking, pulling bits of bracken out of his hair and off his clothes. He said, 'You might teach your dog the difference between people and sheep.'

'Oh,' said the boy indifferently, 'he knew what he was about. He would have done you no harm.' He said something to the dog in Welsh, and it trotted back up the hill and sat down beside him, watching them both.

'Well' - Will began, and then he stopped. He had looked into the boy's face and found there another pair of eyes to shake him off balance. It was not, this time, the unearthliness he had seen in the dog; it was a sudden shock of feeling that he had seen them somewhere before. The boy's eyes were a strange, tawny golden colour like the eyes of a cat or a bird, rimmed with eyelashes so pale as to be almost invisible, they had a cold, unfathomable glitter.

'The raven boy,' he said instantly. "That's who you are, that's what it calls you, the old verse. I have it all now, I can remember. But ravens are black. Why does it call you that?'

'My name is Bran,' the boy said, unsmiling, looking unwinking down at him. 'Bran Davies. I live down on your uncle's farm.'

Will was taken aback for a moment, in spite of his new confidence. 'On the farm?'

'With my father. In a cottage. My father works for David Evans.' He blinked in the sunshine, pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket, and put them on; the tawny eyes disappeared into shadow. He said, in exactly the same conversational tone, 'Bran is really the Welsh word for crow. But people called Bran in the old stories are linked up with the raven, too. A lot of ravens in these hills, there are. So I suppose you could say "the raven boy" if you wanted. Poetic licence, like.'

He swung the satchel off his shoulder and sat down beside Will on a rock, fiddling with the leather strap.

Will said, 'How did you know who I was? That David Evans is my uncle?'

'I could just as well ask how you knew me,' Bran said. 'How did you know, to name me the raven boy?'

He ran one finger idly up and down the strap. Then he smiled suddenly, a smile that illuminated his pale face like quick flaring fire, and he pulled off the dark glasses again.

'I will tell you the answer to both questions, Will Stanton,' he said. 'It is because you are not properly human, but one of the Old Ones of the Light put here to hold back the terrible power of the Dark. You are the last of that circle to be born on earth. And I have been waiting for you.'

Part One: The Golden Harp

The Raven Boy

'You see,' Will said, 'it's the first quest, without help, for me - and the last, because this now is the raising of the last defence the Light can build, to be ready. There is a great battle ahead. Bran - not yet, but not far off. For the Dark is rising, to make its great attempt to take the world for itself until the end of time. When that happens, we must fight and we must win. But we can only win if we have the right weapons. That is what we have been doing, and are still, in such quests as this - gathering the weapons forged for us long, long ago. Six enchanted Signs of the Light, a golden grail, a wonderful harp, a crystal sword... They are all achieved now but the harp and the sword, and I do not know what will be the manner of the sword's finding. But the quest for the harp is mine...'

He picked a sprig of gorse, and sat staring at it. 'Out of a long time ago, there were three verses made,' he said, 'to tell me what to do. They aren't written down any more, though once they were. They are only in my mind. Or at least they used to be - forever, I thought. But then not long ago I was very ill, and when I came out of it, the verses had gone. I'd forgotten them. I don't know if the Dark had a hand in it. That's possible, while I was ... not myself. They couldn't have taken the words for themselves, but they could have managed to hinder my catching them again. I thought I'd go mad, trying to remember. I didn't know what to do. A few bits came back, but not much ... not much. Until I saw your dog.'

'Cafall,' Bran said. The dog raised its head.

'Cafall. Those eyes of his, those silver eyes ... it was as if they broke a spell. He had put me on the Old Way, Cadfan's Way, as well - just here. And I remembered. All the verses. Everything.'

'He is a special dog,' Bran said. 'He is not ... ordinary. What are your verses?'

Will looked at him, opened his mouth, shut it again, and looked out at the mountains in confusion. The white-haired boy laughed. He said, 'I know. For all you can tell, I might be from the Dark in spite of Cafall. Isn't that it?'

Will shook his head. 'If you were from the Dark, I should know very well. There's a sense, that tells us ... the trouble is, that same particular sense that says you aren't from the Dark doesn't say anything else about you either. Not a thing. Nothing bad, nothing good. I don't understand.'

'Ah,' Bran said mockingly. 'I have never understood that myself. But I can tell you, I am like Cafall - I am not quite ordinary either.' He glanced at Will, the pale-lashed eyes darting, secretive. Then he said, reciting deliberately, sounding very sing-song Welsh:

'On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,

Must the youngest open the oldest hills

Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.'

Will sat stone-still, horrified, gazing at him. The land broke in waves. The sky was falling. He said huskily, 'The beginning of it. But you can't know that. It's not possible. There are only three people in the world who -'

He stopped.

The white-haired boy said, 'I was up here with Cafall, a week ago, up here where you never meet anybody, and we met an old man. A strange old man he was, with a lot of white hair and a big beaky nose.'

Will said slowly, 'Ah.'

'He was not English,' said Bran, 'and he was not Welsh either, though he spoke good Welsh, and good English too, for that matter... He must have been a dewin, a wizard, he knew a lot about me...' He pulled a frond of bracken, frowning, and began to pick it to pieces. 'A lot about me... Then he told me about the Dark and the Light. I have never heard anything that I believed so very much, right away, without question. And he told me about you. He told me that it was my task to help you on your quest, but that* - a mocking note slid again into the clear voice, perceptible just for an instant - 'but that because you would not trust me, I must learn those three lines, for a sign. And so he taught me them.'

Will lifted his head to look up the valley, at the blue-grey hills hazy in the sunshine and he shivered; the sense of a looming shadow was on him again, like a dark cloud hovering. Then he said, shrugging it aside, speaking without strain of suspicion now, 'There are three verses. But the first two are the ones that matter, for now. The lines my master Merriman taught you come at the beginning.

'On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,

Must the youngest open the oldest hills

Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.

There fire shall fly from the raven boy,

And the silver eyes that see the wind,

And the Light shall have the harp of gold.

'By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie,

On Cadfan's Way where the kestrels call;

Though grim from Grey King shadows fall,

Yet singing the golden harp shall guide

To break their sleep and bid them ride.'

He reached out and rubbed Cafall's ears. 'The silver eyes,' he said. There was a silence, with only the distant skylark still trilling faintly in the air. Bran had listened without moving, his pale face intent. At length he said, 'Who is Merriman?'

'The old man you met, of course. If you mean, what is he, that's harder. Merriman is my master. He is the first of the Old Ones, and the strongest, and the wisest... He will have no part in this quest now, I think. Not in the seeking. There are too many things for all of us to do, in too many places.'

'Cadfan's Way, it said in the verse. I remember he told me one other thing, he said Cafall would get you on to the Way, so that the two things together, the place and Cafall himself, would be important - then he said, and also the Way for later. Later - so not yet, I suppose.' Bran sighed. 'What does it all mean?' For all his strangeness, it was the plaintive question of a very normal boy.

'I was thinking,' Will said, 'that the day of the dead might be All Hallows' Eve. Don't you think? Hallowe'en, when people used to believe all the ghosts walked.'

'I know some who still believe they do,' Bran said. Things like that last a long time, up here. There is one old lady I know puts out food for the spirits, at Hallowe'en. She says they eat it too, though if you ask me it is more likely the cats, she has four of them... Hallowe'en will be this next Saturday, you know.'

'Yes,' Will said. 'I do know. Very close.'

'Some people say that if you go and sit in the church porch till midnight on. Hallowe'en, you hear a voice calling out the names of everyone who will die in the next year,' Bran grinned. 'I have never tried it.'

But Will was not smiling as he listened. He said thoughtfully, 'You just said, in the next year. And the verse says, "On the day of the dead when the year too dies." But that doesn't make sense. Hallowe'en isn't the end of the year.'

'Maybe once upon a time it used to be,' Bran said. 'The end and the beginning both, once, instead of December. In Welsh, Hallowe'en is called Calan Gaeaf, and that means the first day of winter. Pretty warm for winter, of course. Mind you, nobody is going to get me to spend the night in St Cadfan's churchyard, however warm.'

'I was there this morning, at St Cadfan's,' Will said. 'That was what put the name back into my head, somehow, to come and look for the Way. But now I have the verse, I must begin at the beginning.'

"The hardest part,' Bran said. He rugged off his school tie, rolled it up and stuffed it into his trouser pocket. 'It says, the youngest must open the oldest hills, through the door of the birds. Right? And you are the youngest of the Old Ones, and these are the oldest hills in Britain for sure, these and the Scottish hills. But the door of the birds, that's hard ... The birds have their holes and nests everywhere, the mountains are full of birds. Crows, kestrels, ravens, buzzards, plovers, wrens, wheatears, pipits, curlews - lovely it is, listening to the curlews down on the marshes in spring. And look, there is a peregrine.' He pointed upwards, to a dark speck in the clear blue sky drifting lazily round in a great sweeping curve, far above their heads.

'How can you tell?'

'A kestrel would be smaller, so would a merlin. It isn't a crow. It could be a buzzard. But I think it's a peregrine - you get to know them, they are so scarce now that you look more carefully ... and I have a reason of my own too, because peregrines like to bother ravens, and as you pointed out, I am the raven boy.'

Will studied him: the eyes were hidden again behind the sunglasses, and the pale face, almost as pale as the hair, was expressionless. It must always be difficult to read this boy Bran; to know properly what he was thinking or feeling. Yet here he was, part of the pattern: found by Merriman, Will's master, and now by Will - and described in a prophetic verse that had been made more than a thousand years ago...

He said, experimentally, 'Bran.'

'What?'

'Nothing. I was just practising. It's a funny name, I never heard it before.'

"The only way it is funny is in that English voice of yours. It is not bran like a breakfast cereal, it is longer-sounding, braaan, braaan.'

'Braaaaaaan,' said Will.

'Better.' He squinted at Will over the top of the sun-glasses. 'Is that a map sticking out of your pocket? Let's have it here a minute.'

Will handed it over. Squatting on the hillside. Bran spread it on the rustling bracken. 'Now,' he said. 'Read out the names that I point to.'

Will peered obediently at the moving finger. He saw: Tal y Llyn, Mynydd Ceiswyn, Cenimaes, Llanwrin, Machynlleth, Afon Dyfi, Llangelynin. He read aloud, laboriously, 'Tally-lin, Minid Seeswin, Semeyes, Lan-rin Machine-leth, Affron Diffy, Lang-elly-nin.'

Bran moaned softly. 'I was afraid of that.'

'Well,' said Will defensively, 'that's exactly what they look like. Oh, wait a minute, I remember Uncle David said you pronounce f like v. So that makes this one "Avon Divvy."'

'Duvvy,' said Bran. 'Written in English, Dovey. The Afon Dyfi is the River Dovey, and that place over there is called Aberdyfi, which means the mouth of the Dovey, Aberdovey. The Welsh y is mostly like the English u in "run" or "hunt."'

'Mostly ' said Will suspiciously.

'Well, sometimes it isn't. But you'd better stick to that for now. Look here -' He fumbled inside his leather satchel and brought out a school notebook and pencil. He wrote:

Mynydd Ceiswyn. 'Now that,' he said, 'is pronounced Munuth Kice-ooin. Kice like rice. Go on, say it.'

Will said it, peering incredulously at the spelling.

'Three things there,' said Bran, writing. He appeared to be enjoying himself. 'Double d is always a "th" sound, but a soft sound, like in "leather", not in "smith." Then, c is always a hard sound in Welsh, like in "cat." So is g, as a matter of fact - it's always g as in "go," not g as in "gentle." And the Welsh w is like the oo sound in "pool," nearly always. So that's why Mynydd Ceiswyn is pronounced Munuth Kice-oo-in.'

Will said, 'But it ought to be un at the end, not in, because you said the Welsh y was like u in "run."'

Bran chuckled. 'There's a memory. Sorry. That's one of the times when it isn't. You'll just have to get used to them if you're going to say the places right. After all you can't complain about us not being consistent, not when your old English is full of things like dough and through and thorough.'

Will took the pencil and copied from the map 'Cemmaes' and 'Llangelynin.' 'All right then,' he said. 'If the c is hard, then it must be Kem-eyes.'

'Very good,' Bran said. 'But a hard s, not soft. Said fast it comes out Kemmess. Like chemist, without the t.'

Will sighed, looking hard at his next sample, 'Hard g, and the y sound. So it's... Lan-gel-un-in.'

'You're getting there,' Bran said; 'All you have to learn now is the one sound most Englishmen can never manage. Open your mouth a little way and put the tip of your tongue against the back of your front teeth. As if you're just about to say lan.'

Will gave him a doubtful look, but did what he was told. Then he twitched his lips upwards, and made a face like a rabbit.

'Stop it,' said Bran, spluttering. 'Get educated, man. Now while your tongue is there, blow round the sides of it. Both sides at once.'

Will blew.

"That's right. Now, say the word lan but give a bit of a blow before you bring it out. Like this: llan, llan.'

'Llan, llan,' said Will, feeling like a steam engine, and stopped in astonishment. 'Hey, that sounds Welsh!'

'Pretty good,' said Bran critically. 'You'll have to practise. Actually when a Welshman says it, his tongue isn't like that and the whole sound comes out from the sides of his mouth, but that's no good for a Sais. You'll do all right. And if you get fed up with trying, you can take the other English way out and say II like thl.'

'Enough,' said Will. 'Enough.'

'Just try one more,' Bran said. 'You wouldn't believe the way some people say this one. Well, yes you would, because you did too.' He wrote: Machynlleth.

Will groaned, and took a deep breath. 'Well - there's the y - and the ll -'

'And the ch is sort of breathy, the way the Scots say loch. At the back of your throat, like.'

'Why do you people make everything so complicated? Mach... un... lleth.'

'Machynlleth.'

'Machynlleth.'

'Not bad at all.'

'But mine doesn't really sound like yours. Yours sounds wetter. Like German. Achtung! Achtung!' Will yelled suddenly at the top of his voice, and Cafall jumped up and barked, tail waving.

'Do you speak German '

'Good Lord, no! I heard that in some old film. Achtung! Machynlleth!' ,

'Machynlleth,' said Bran.

'You see, yours does sound wetter. Sploshier, I expect all Welsh babies dribble a lot.'

'Get out of here,' said Bran, and grabbed at him as Will dodged away. They ran down the mountain, laughing, in a wild zigzag, with Cafall bounding joyously alongside.

But halfway. Will stumbled and slowed down; without warning, he felt giddy, his legs weak and unreliable. He staggered to a near-by wall and leaned against it, panting. Bran yelled cheerfully over his shoulder as he ran, satchel flying; then slowed, stopped, looked more carefully and came back.

'Are you all right, then?'

'I think so. Head hurts. It's my stupid legs though, they give out too easily. I suppose I'm still getting better, really - I was ill, for a while -'

'I knew, and I ought to have remembered.' Bran stood fidgeting, cross with himself. 'Your friend Mr Merriman said you'd been even more ill than anyone realised.'

'But he wasn't there,' Will said. 'Well. Not that that means a thing, of course.'

'Sit down,' Bran said. 'Put your head down on your knees.'

'I'm okay. Really. Just have to get my breath back.'

'We're very close to home, or we should be. Just a few hundred yards over that way -' Bran scrambled up on the high dry stone wall to give himself a better view.

But while he stood there, suddenly a great angry yell came from the other side of the wall, and the barking of dogs. Will saw Bran draw himself up tall and straight where he stood on the wall, looking down haughtily. He heaved himself up- right to peep over the slate-topped edge, past Bran's feet, and saw a man approaching at a half-run, shouting, and waving one arm angrily; in the other arm he carried what looked like a shotgun. When he came closer, he began calling to Bran in Welsh, Will did not recognise him at first, for he wore no hat, and the tousled head of raw red hair was unfamiliar. Then he saw that it was Caradog Prichard.

When the farmer paused for breath, Bran said clearly, pointedly using English, 'My dog does not chase sheep, Mr Prichard. And anyway he is not on your land, he is over this side of the wall.'

'I tell you that he is a rogue dog, and he has been worrying my sheep!' Prichard said furiously; his English was sibilant, heavily accented, thickened by rage. 'Him and that damn black hound of John Rowlands. I will shoot them both if I catch them at it, you be sure I will. And you and your little English friend there had better keep off my land too, if you know what's good for you.' The small eyes in his flushed, pudgy face glared maliciously at Will.

Will said nothing. Bran did not move; he stood there looking down at the angry farmer. He said softly, 'Bad luck you would have, if you shot Cafall, Caradog Prichard.' He ran one hand through his white hair, pushing it back, in a gesture that seemed to Will oddly affected. 'You want to look more closely at those sheep,' Bran said, 'before you go blaming dogs for what is foxes' work.'

'Foxes!' said Prichard contemptuously. 'I know a fox's killing when I see it, and I know a rogue dog too. Keep away from my land, both of you.' But he was not meeting Bran's eye now, nor looking at Will; he swung round without another word and strode off across the pasture, with his dogs trotting at his heels.

Bran climbed down from the wall.

'Bah!' he said. 'Worrying sheep! Cafall is a match for any working dog in this valley; he would never in the world go wild after any sheep, let alone on Caradog Prichard's land.' He looked at the vanishing Prichard, and then at Will, and smiled. It was a strange sly smile; Will was not sure that he liked it.

'You will find out,' Bran said, 'that people like him are a bit afraid of me, deep down. It is because I am albino, you see. The white hair, and funny eyes, and not much pigment in the skin - a bit of a freak, you might say.'

'I shouldn't,' Will said mildly.

'Maybe not,' Bran said without much belief, acid in his tongue. 'But it is said often enough at school... and outside too, by nice men like Mr Prichard. You see, all good Welsh-men are dark, dark of hair and dark of eyes, and the only fair-skinned creatures in Wales, in the old days, were the Tylwyth Teg. The old spirits, the little people. Anyone as fair as me must have something to do with the Tylwyth Teg ... Nobody believes in such things any more, oh no, of course not, but in the middle of the winter night when the wind is blowing dark and the old television is not on, I bet you half the people in this valley would not like to swear that I could not bring the Evil Eye on them.'

Will scratched his head. "There was certainly something ... fidgety ... in the way that man looked at you, when you said -' He shook his shoulders, like a dog coming out of water. He did not look at Bran; he disliked the shadows of crafty arrogance that this talking had put over the other boy's face. It was a pity, it shouldn't be necessary; one day he would take it away... He said, 'Caradog Prichard isn't dark. He has red hair. Like carrots.'

'His family is from Dinas Mawddwy way,' Bran said. 'His mother, anyway. There was supposed to be a whole tribe of villains up there once, all red-haired, real terrors. Anyway there are still redheads come from Dinas today.'

'Would he really shoot Cafall?'

'Yes,' Bran said shortly. 'Caradog Prichard is very strange. There is a saying that anyone who spends the night alone up on Cader will come down next morning either a poet, or mad. And my father says that once when he was young, Caradog Prichard did spend the night alone up on Cader, because he wanted to be a great bard.'

'It can't have worked.'

'Well. Perhaps it worked in one way. He is not much of a poet, but he often acts as if he were more than a little bit mad.'

'What is Cader?'

Bran stared at him. 'Don't know much about Wales, do you ? Cader Idris, over there.' He pointed to the line of blue grey peaks across the valley. 'One of the highest mountains in Wales. You should know about Cader. After all it comes in your verse.'

Will frowned. 'No, it doesn't.'

'Oh, yes. Not by name, no - but it's important in that second part. That's where he lives you see, up on Cader. The Brenin Llwyd. The Grey King.'

Part One: The Golden Harp

Grey Fox

Nobody else could feel it. Will knew. As far as outward appearances went, there was no reason why anybody should feel the least unease. The skies were a gentle light blue; the sun shone with unseasonable warmth, so that Rhys sat up on the tractor bare-backed as he ploughed the last stubbly fields, singing a clear tenor over the roar of the machine. The earth smelled clean. Yarrow and ragwort starred the hedgerows white and yellow, with the red berries of the hawthorn thick above them; the sweeping slopes where the valley began to rise were golden-brown with bracken, dry as tinder in this strange Indian-summer sun. Hazy on the horizon all around, the mountains lay like sleeping animals, their muted colours changing with every hour of the day from brown to green to purple and softly back again.

Yet behind all this autumnal gentleness, as he roamed the fields and the gorse-starred mountain, Will could feel tension mounting everywhere, advancing like a slow relentless flood from the high peaks brooding over the end of the valley. Enmity was beginning to push at him. Slowly but irresistibly, the pressure of malevolence was building up to the point where it could break and overwhelm him. And nobody else knew. Only the hidden senses of an Old One could feel the working of the Dark.

Aunt Jen was delighted with the change in Will's appearance. 'Look at you - only a few days, but you have colour in your cheeks now, and if this sun goes on you will be getting brown. I was writing to Alice last night. I said, you wouldn't know him, he looks like a different boy -'

'Very nice sun, indeed,' Will's Uncle David said. 'But a little too much, for this time of year, thank you. The pastures are getting dry, and the bracken on the mountain - we could do with a bit of rain, now.'

'Hark at you,' Aunt Jen said, laughing. 'Rain is one thing we are never short of here.'

But still the sunny skies smiled, and Will went off with John Rowlands and his dogs to fetch a flock of yearling sheep that was to be wintered at Clwyd Farm. The hill farmer who owned them had already driven them down halfway to another farm at the head of the valley. As he looked at the milling off-white chaos of woolly backs, bobbing and shoving, eighty or so lusty young ewes bleating and baahing in ear-splitting chorus, Will could not imagine how they could possibly be brought intact to Clwyd. When just one sheep broke away from the rest and pranced sideways towards him, where he stood in the field, he could not persuade it back to its fellows even by yelling and pushing and whacking its broad woolly sides. 'Baaaa,' said the sheep, in a deep stupid baritone, as if he had not been there, and it wandered off and began chewing at the hedge. Yet the instant that Tip, John Rowlands's sheepdog, trotted purposefully in its direction, the sheep turned dutifully round and bobbed back to the rest.

Will could not see how John Rowlands communicated with his dogs. There were two: the dappled Tip, named for the splashes of white on his muzzle and the very end of his waving tail, and a bigger, more formidable-looking dog called Pen, with a black, long-haired coat and a crooked ear, torn in some fight long ago. Rowlands needed to do no more than look at them, a smile creasing his lean brown face, with a soft word in Welsh, or a quick whistle, and they would be off on some complicated manoeuvre that the average man could have understood only after ten minutes of detailed explanation.

'Walk at the front,' he called to Will through the deep, unnerving chorus of baaas, as he opened the gate and the sheep poured through into the road like milk. 'Well forward, to wave at any cars coming and stop them at the side.*

Will blinked in alarm. 'But how do I keep the sheep back? They'll all run past me!'

John Rowlands's grin flashed white in the dark Welsh face. 'Don't worry. Pen will see to them.' .

And so Pen did; it was as if he had a rope tied round the front of the herd of sheep to keep it in a neat tight curve. Trotting, darting, slinking on his belly, moving always forward, sometimes persuading an errant sheep in the right direction with a curt single bark, he kept them all moving obediently along the road. And Will, clutching the stick John Rowlands had given him, strode ahead bursting with confident pride, feeling as if he had been a real shepherd since time began.

They met only two cars, in fact, all the way down the valley road, but directing even those two to pull in beside the hedge was enough pleasure, with the sheep crowding by in a rippling grey flood. Will was enjoying his job so much that perhaps, he thought afterwards, he let his deeper watchfulness falter. For when the attack came, he had no sense of warning at all.

They were on a lonely part of the road, with barren moorland on one side of the road and dark tree-clad mountainside rising at the other. No fields were cultivated here. Bracken and rocks fringed the roadside as if it were a track over the open mountain. Suddenly Will became aware of a change in the sound of the sheep behind him: a higher note of alarm in their bleating, a flurry of scuffling hooves. He thought at first that it must be John Rowlands and Tip, heading off a runaway; but then he heard a sharp, piercing whistle that in a moment had Pen swinging round at the sheep, growling, barking, threatening them to a standstill. And he heard John Rowlands calling: 'Will! Quick! Will''

He ran back, skirting the frightened bleating sheep; then jerked to a halt. Halfway past the flock, at the edge of the road, there was a great splash of red at the throat of a single tottering animal, smaller than the rest. Will saw a flicker of movement in the bracken as some unseen creature fled. Away it went towards the mountain, and the fronds waved and then were still. Will watched horrified as the wounded sheep staggered sideways and fell. Its fellows pushed away from it, terrified; the dogs growled and threatened, frantically containing the herd, and Will heard John Rowlands yelling, and the thwacking of his stick against the hard road. He too yelled and waved his arms at the heaving flock of sheep, keeping them together as they tried in panic to break away over the moor, and gradually the nervous animals calmed and were still.

John Rowlands was bending over the injured ewe.

Will shouted, across the heaving backs, 'Is it all right?'

'Not much hurt. Missed the vein. We're lucky.' Rowlands bent down, heaved the inert sheep over his shoulders and grasped its fore and hind feet separately, so that it hung across the back of his neck like a huge muffler. Grunting with effort, he slowly stood up; his neck and cheek were smeared red by the sheep's blood-stained fleece.

Will came towards him. 'Was it a dog?'

Rowlands could not move his head, because of the sheep, but his bright eyes swivelled quickly round. 'Did you see a dog?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'I saw something running away through the bracken, but I couldn't tell what it was. I just thought it must be a dog - I mean, what else could it have been?'

Rowlands did not answer, but waved him ahead and whistled to the dogs. The flock began pouring on down the road. He walked at the side of it now, leaving the rear entirely to Tip; neatly and efficiently the dog kept the sheep moving along.

Soon they came to a deserted cottage set back from the road: stone-walled, slate-roofed, sturdy-looking, but with the glass broken in its two small windows. John Rowlands kicked open the heavy wooden door, staggered inside, and came out without the sheep, breathing heavily and wiping his face on his sleeve. He closed the door. 'Be safe there until we can get back to her,' he called to Will. 'Not far now.'

Before long they were at Clwyd. Will opened the gate of the broad pasture where he knew the sheep were to be kept, and the dogs nudged and nagged them inside. For a few moments the sheep eddied about, bleating and muttering; then they settled down to a greedy rasping nibble of the lush grass.

John Rowlands fetched the Land-Rover and took Will with him to collect the injured sheep; at the last moment the black dog Pen leaped up into the car and settled down between Will's feet. Will rubbed his silky ears.

'It must have been a dog attacked that sheep, surely?' he said as they drove.

Rowlands sighed. 'I hope not. But indeed, I cannot think of any wild creature that would attack a flock, with men and dogs alongside. Nothing but a wolf would do that, and there have been no wolves in Wales for two hundred years or more.'

They drew up outside the cottage. Rowlands turned the car so that its back door would be in easy reach, and went into the little stone building.

He was out again almost at once, empty-handed, looking uneasily about him. 'She's gone!'

'Gone!'

There must be some sign - Pen! Tyrd yma!' John Rowlands went casting around outside the cottage, peering intently at grass and bracken and gorse, and the black dog wove its way round and about him, nose down. Will too peered hopefully, looking for flattened plants or signs of wool, or blood. He saw nothing. A jagged rock of white quartz glittered before them in the sunshine. A woodlark sang. Then all at once, Pen gave one short sharp bark and was off on a scent, trotting confidently, head down, through the grass.

They followed. But Will was puzzled, and he could see the same bafflement on John Rowlands's seamed face - for the dog was tracking through untouched grass, not a stem bent by the passing even of a small creature, let alone a sheep. There was the sound of water running somewhere ahead of them, and soon they came to a small stream flowing down towards the river, the jutting rocks in its course showing how much lower than usual it was running in the dry spell.

Pen paused, cast up and down the stream unsuccessfully, and came to John Rowlands whining.

'He's lost it,' the shepherd said. 'Whatever it was. Could have been no more than a rabbit, of course - though not too many rabbits I have ever heard tell of would have the sense to hide their trail in running water.'

Will said: 'But what happened to the sheep? It was hurt, it couldn't have walked away.' '

'Particularly through a closed door,' Rowlands said dryly.

'That's right, of course! D'you think whatever animal attacked it would have been clever enough to come back and drag it away?'

'Clever enough, perhaps,' Rowlands said, staring back at the cottage. 'But not strong enough. A yearling will weigh about a hundred pounds, I near broke my back carrying her a little way. You'd need a mighty big dog to drag that weight.'

Will heard himself say, 'Two dogs?'

John Rowlands looked at him with narrowed eyes. 'You have some unexpected ideas, Will, for one not brought up on a farm ... yes, two dogs together could drag a sheep. But how would they do it without leaving a great flat trail? And anyway, how could two or twenty dogs open that door?'

'Goodness knows,' Will said. 'Well - perhaps it wasn't any animal. Perhaps somebody drove by and heard the sheep bleating and got it out of the cottage and took it away. I mean they couldn't know we were coming back.'

'Aye,' John Rowlands said. He did not sound convinced. 'Well, if any did that, we shall find the sheep at home when we get there, for it has the Pentref mark on its ear and any local man would know that we winter William Pentref's ewes. Come on, now.' He whistled to Pen.

They were silent on the drive home, each lost deep in concern and baffled conjecture. John Rowlands, Will knew, was worrying over the need to find the sheep quickly, to doctor its wounds. He, Will, had his own worries. Although he had not mentioned it to Rowlands, and hardly dared even to think what it might mean, he knew that in the moment when the wounded sheep had staggered and fallen beside the flock, he had seen something more than that formless twitch of motion in the bracken where the attacker fled. He had seen the flash of a silvery body, and the muzzle of what had looked very much like a white dog.

Music was flowing out of the farmhouse in a golden stream, as if the sun were inside the window, shining out. Will paused, astonished, and stood listening. Somebody was playing a harp, long rippling arpeggios soaring out like birdsong; then without a break the music changed to something like a Bach sonata, notes and patterns as precise as snowflakes. John Rowlands looked down at him with a smile for a moment, then pushed open the door and went in. A side door was open into a little parlour that Will had never noticed before; it looked like a creaky-neat Best Room, tucked away from the big kitchen-living room where all the real life of the house went on. The music was coming from this parlour; Rowlands stuck his head round the door, and so did Will. Sitting, there, running his hands over the strings of a harp twice his' own height, was Bran.

He stopped, stilling the strings with his palms. 'Hullo, then.'

'Much better' said John Rowlands. 'Very much better, that, today.'

'Good,' Bran said.

Will said, 'I didn't know you could play the harp.'

'Ah,' Bran said solemnly. 'Lot of things the English don't know. Mr Rowlands teaches me. He taught your auntie too, this is hers I'm at.' He ran one finger across the lilting strings. 'Freezing in the winter in this room, always, but it keeps better in tune than in the warm... Ah, Will Stanton, you don't know what a distinguished place you are in. This is the only farm in Wales where there are two harps. Mr Rowlands has one in his house too, you see.' He nodded through the window, at the trio of farm cottages across the yard. 'I practise there mostly. But Mrs Rowlands is busy cleaning today.'

'Where is David Evans?' asked John Rowlands.

'In the yard with Rhys. Cowshed, I think.'

'Diolch.' He went out, preoccupied.

'I thought you'd be at school,' Will said.

'Half-holiday. I forget why.' Bran wore the protective smoky glasses even indoors; they made him look eccentric and unreal, the inscrutable dark circles taking all expression out of his pale face. He was wearing dark trousers too, and a dark sweater, making his white hair still more striking and unnatural. Will thought suddenly: he must do it on purpose, he likes being different.

'An awful thing happened,' he said, and told Bran about the sheep. But again he left out the quick glimpse of the attacker that had made him think it was a white dog.

'Are you sure the sheep was alive when John left it?' Bran said.

'Oh, yes, I think so. There's always the chance someone just stopped and took it away. I expect John's checking.'

'What a weird business,' Bran said. He stood up, stretching. 'I've had enough practising. Want to come out?'

'I'll go and tell Aunt Jen.'

On the way out. Bran picked up his flat leather schoolbag from a chair beside the door. 'I must drop this off at home. And put the kettle on for Da. He comes in for a cuppa, round about now, if he's working near by.'

Will said curiously, 'Does your mother work too?'

'Oh, she's dead. Died when I was a baby, I don't remember her at all.' Bran gave him a strange sideways look. 'Nobody told you about me, then? My dad and I, we're a bachelor household. Mrs Evans is very nice, always. We eat supper at the farm, weekends. Of course, you haven't been here at a weekend yet.'

'I feel as if I'd been here for weeks,' Will said, putting his face up to the sun. Something in the way Bran spoke was making him oddly uneasy, and he did not want to think about it too closely. He pushed it to the back of his mind, to join that image of the flicker of a white muzzle through the bracken.

'Where's Cafall?' he said.

'Oh, he will be out with Da. Thinking I am still at school.' Bran laughed. 'The time we had when Cafall was young, trying to persuade him that school is for boys but not puppies. When I went to primary school in the village, he used to sit at the gate all day, just waiting.'

'Where do you go now?'

'Tywyn Grammar. In a bus.'

They scuffed their feet through the dust of the path down to the cottages, a path made by wheels, two ruts with hummocky grass growing between. There were three cottages, but only two were occupied. Now that he was closer, Will could see that the third had been converted into a garage. He looked beyond, up the valley, where the mountains rose blue-hazed and beautiful into the clear sky, and he shivered. Though the mystery of the wounded sheep had taken up the front of his mind for a while, the deeper uneasiness was swelling back again now. All around, throughout the countryside, he could feel the malevolence of the Dark growing, pushing at him. It could not focus upon him, follow him like the gaze of a great fierce eye; an Old One had the power to conceal himself so that his presence could not at once be sensed so precisely. But clearly the Grey King knew that he was bound to come, soon, from somewhere. They had their prophecies, as did the Light. The barriers had gone up, and were growing stronger every day. Will felt suddenly how strange it was for him to be the invader; for the Light to be advancing against the Dark. Always before, through all the centuries, it had been the other way round, with the powers of the Dark sweeping in fearsome recurrent attack over the land of men protected in gentleness by the Light. Always the Light had been the defenders of men, champions of all that the Dark came to overturn. Now, an Old One must deliberately reverse the long habit of mind; now he must find the thrust of attack, instead of the resolute sturdy defence which for so long had kept the Dark at bay.

But of course, he thought, this attack itself is a small part of a defence, to build resistance for that other last and most dreadful time when the Dark will come rising again. It is a quest, to awaken the last allies of the Light. And there is very little time.

Bran said suddenly, uncannily echoing the last thread of his thought, 'Hallowe'en, tonight.'

'Yes, 'Will said.

Before he could say more, they were at the door of the cottage; it was half-open, a low heavy door set in the stone wall. At Bran's footsteps the dog Cafall came bounding out, a small white whirlwind, leaping and whining with pleasure, licking his hand. It was noticeable that he did not bark. From inside, a man's voice called, 'Bran?' and began speaking in Welsh. Then as Will followed Bran through the door, the man speaking, standing shirt-sleeved at a table, turned in mid-sentence and caught sight of him. He broke off at once and said formally, 'I beg your pardon.'

'This is Will,' Bran said, tossing his bag of books on the table. 'Mr Evans's nephew.'

'Yes, I thought perhaps it was. How do you do, young man?' Bran's father came forward, holding out his hand; his gaze was direct and his handshake firm, though Will had an immediate curious feeling that the real man was not there behind the eyes. 'I am Owen Davies. I have been hearing about you.'

'How d'you do, Mr Davies,' said-Will. He was trying not to look surprised. Whatever he had expected in Bran's father, it was not this man: a man so completely ordinary and unremarkable, whom you could pass in the street without noticing he had been there. Someone as odd as Bran should have had an odd father. But Owen Davies was all medium and average: average height, medium-brown hair in a medium quantity; a pleasant, ordinary face, with a slightly pointed nose and thin lips; an average voice, neither deep nor high, with the same precise enunciation that Will was beginning to learn belonged to all North Welshmen. His clothes were ordinary, the same shirt and trousers and boots that would be worn by anyone else on a farm. Even the dog that stood at his side, quietly watching them all, was a standard Welsh sheepdog, black-backed, white-chested, black-tailed, unremarkable. Not like Cafall: just as Bran's father was not at all like Bran.

'There is tea in the pot, Bran, if you would both like a cup,' Mr Davies said. 'I have had mine, I am off over to the big pasture. And I shall be going out tonight, there is a chapel meeting. Mrs Evans will give you your supper.'

That's good,' Will said cheerfully. 'He can help me with my homework.'

'Homework?' said Bran.

'Oh, yes. This isn't just a holiday for me, you know. They gave me all kinds of work from school, so I shouldn't get behind. Algebra, today. And history.'

'That will be very good,' Mr Davies said earnestly, pulling on his waistcoat, 'so long as Bran takes care to do his own work as well. Of course, I know he will do that. Well, it is nice to meet you, Will. See you later, Bran. Cafall can stay.'

And he went out, nodding to them amiably but with complete seriousness, leaving Will to reflect that after all there was one thing about Owen Davies that was not altogether common; he had not a glimmer of laughter in him.

There was no expression in Bran's face. He said flatly, 'My father is a big one for chapel. He is a deacon, and there are two or three meetings for him in the week. And we go twice on Sundays.'

'Oh,' Will said.

'Yes. Oh is right. Want a cup of tea?'

'Not really, thank you.'

'Let's go out, then.' With absentminded conscientiousness Bran rinsed out the teapot and left it neatly inverted on the draining-board. 'Tyrd yma, Cafall.'

The white dog bounded happily beside them as they crossed the fields, away from cottage and farm, up the valley towards the mountains and the lone near peak. It stood at a right angle to the mountain behind it, jutting into the flat valley floor.

'Funny how that rock sticks out like that,' Will said.

'Craig yr Aderyn? That's special, it's the only place in Britain where cormorants nest inland. Not very far inland, of course. Four miles from the sea, we are here. Haven't you been over there? Come on, we've got time.' Bran changed direction slightly. 'You can see the birds fine from the road.'

'I thought the road was that way,' Will said, pointing.

'It is. We can cut across to it this way.' Bran opened a gate on to a footpath, crossed the path and scrambled over the wall on the other side. 'The only thing is, you must go quietly,' he said with a grin. 'This is Caradog Prichard's land.'

'Hush, Cafall,' Will said in a heavy stage-whisper, turning his head. But the dog was not there. Will paused, puzzled. 'Bran? Where's Cafall?'

Bran whistled. They both stood waiting, looking back at the long sweep of the slate-edged stone wall along the stubbled field. Nothing moved. The sun shone. Far away, sheep called. Bran whistled again, with no result. Then he went back, with Will close behind, and they climbed over the wall again and went down to the footpath they had crossed.

Bran whistled a third time, and called in Welsh. There was concern in his voice.

Will said, 'Wherever could he have gone? He was right behind me when I came over the wall.'

'He never does this. Never. He will never go from me without permission, or not come when he is called.' Bran gazed anxiously up and down the footpath. 'I don't like it. I shouldn't have let him come so near Mr Prichard's land. You and me is one thing, but Cafall -' He whistled again, loud and desperate.

'You don't suppose -' Will said. He stopped.

'That Prichard would shoot him, the way he said?'

'No, I was going to say, you don't suppose Cafall wouldn't come because he knew he shouldn't go on Mr Prichard's land. But that's silly, no dog could work out something like that.'

'Oh,' Bran said unhappily, 'dogs can work out things a lot more complicated than that. I don't know. Let's try this way. It leads to the river.'

They set off along the path, away from the looming mass of the rock Craig yr Aderyn. Somewhere ahead of them, a long way off, a dog barked.

'Is that him?' Will said hopefully.

Bran's white head was cocked on one side. The dog barked again, closer. 'No. That's John Rowlands's big dog, Pen. But Cafall might have gone that way when he heard him'

They both broke into a run, along the stony, grass-patched path. Will very soon lost his breath and dropped behind. Bran disappeared round a bend in the path ahead of him. When Will turned the comer himself, two things slammed simultaneously into his consciousness: the sight of Bran - without Cafall - talking to his father and John Rowlands, and the sick certainty that something evil had taken control of everything that was happening now on Clwyd Farm. It was a recognition, like the sudden sensing of an overwhelming sound or smell.

He came panting up to them, as Bran said: '... heard Pen bark, and thought he might have come this way, so we came running.'

'And you saw nothing at all?' Owen Davies said. His face was tight with some deep concern. Looking at it, Will felt foreboding clutch at the pit of his stomach.

John Rowlands said, his deep voice strained, 'And you, Will? Did you see anyone, anything, on the path just now?'

Will stared. 'No. Only Cafall, before, and now we've lost him.'

'No creature came past you?'

'Nothing at all. Why? What's wrong?'

Owen Davies said, bleakly, 'In the big pasture up the way, there are four dead sheep with their throats torn out, and there is no gate open or any sign of what can have attacked them.'

Will looked in horror at John Rowlands. 'Is it the same -'

'Who can tell?' said the shepherd bitterly. Like Davies, he seemed caught between distress and rage. 'But it is not dogs, I do not see how it could be dogs. It looks more like the work of foxes, though how that can be, I do not know.'

"The milgwn, from the hills,' said Bran.

'Nonsense,' his father said.

'The what?' said Will.

The milgwn,' Bran said. His eyes were still darting round in search of Cafall, and he spoke automatically. 'Grey foxes. Some of the farmers say there are big grey foxes that live up in the mountains, bigger and faster than our red foxes down here.'

Owen Davies said, 'That is nonsense. There are no such things. I have told you before, I will not have you listening to those rubbishy old tales.'

His tone was sharp. Bran shrugged.

But across the front of Will's mind there came suddenly a brilliant image, clear as a film thrown on a screen: he saw three great foxes trotting in line, enormous grey-white animals with thick coats growing to the broadness of a ruff round their necks, and full brush-like tails. They moved across a hillside, among rocks, and for an instant one of them turned its head and looked full at him, with bright unwinking eyes. For that instant he could see them as clearly as he could see Bran. Then the image was gone, they were vanished, and he was standing again in the sunshine, mute, dazed, knowing that in one of the brief communications that can come - very rarely, only very rarely - unguarded from one Old One to another, his masters had sent him a warning picture of the creatures of the Grey King, agents of the Dark.

He said abruptly, 'They aren't tales. Bran is right.*

Bran stared at him, shaken by the crisp certainty in his voice. But Owen Davies looked across in chilly reproof, the comers of his thin mouth turned down. 'Don't be foolish, boy,' he said coldly. 'What can you know of our foxes?'

Will never knew what he could have said in answer, for breaking into the tense stillness of the sunlit afternoon came a shout from John Rowlands, urgent, loud.

'Tan! Look over there! There is fire on the mountain! Fire!'

Part One: The Golden Harp

Fire on the Mountain

There was not much smoke, for so much fire. In a line along the lower slope of the mountain, which they could only just see above the hedge from where they stood, flames were blazing in the bracken. It was like a long wound, a gash in the peaceful brown slope, quivering with deadly, ominous life. Yet there was little colour in it, and they were too far away to hear any sound. For a moment Will was conscious only of wonder that John Rowlands should have caught sight of it at all.

Then they were deep in instructions, and the urgency of Rowlands's soft voice. 'Off to the farm, both of you, quick. Call the fire from Tywyn and the police, and then come back with anyone who is there. All the hands you can get. And bring more fire brooms. Bran, you know where they are. Come on, Owen.'

Both men ran up the path across the valley, and the boys dived for the gate that led over the fields to Clwyd Farm, Bran swung his head round in a whirl of white hair: Take it gently, now,' he said earnestly, 'or you'll be worse ill - ' and he was off like a sprinter, leaving Will to close the gate and trot resignedly in his wake.

The telephoning was done by the time he caught Bran up at the farm. David Evans took them with him in the Land-Rover, with Rhys and a tall thin farmer called Tom Ellis who had been there, when they arrived. The back of the little car had been hastily filled with fire brooms and sacking, and several buckets that Will's uncle seemed to have small hope of using. The dogs, for once, were left behind.

They will be no good with fire,' Rhys said, seeing Will cock his head to the plaintive barking. 'And the sheep can get out of the way on their own - indeed they will all be well away, by now.'

'I wonder where Cafall is,' Will said, and then caught sight of Bran's face and wished he had not.

Close to, the fire on the mountain was very much more alarming than it had seemed from a distance. They could smell it now, and hear it; smell the smoke more bitter than a farm bonfire; hear the soft, dreadful sound of flames consuming the bracken, like paper crumpled in the hand, and the sudden crackling roar as a bush or a patch of gorse went up. And they could see the flames, leaping high, bright red and yellow at the edges of the fire but ferocious and near-invisible at its heart.

As they tumbled out of the car David Evans was yelling for the fire brooms. Will and Bran pulled them out: besoms made like those for old-fashioned sweeping, but with the twigs longer and wider-spread. John Rowlands and Bran's father, already equipped, were thrashing at the leading edge of the fire, trying to contain it; but the wind was gusting higher, and the flames, now leaping, now creeping, were soon past them and travelling along the lower edge of the mountain. As they swept upwards, roaring up the hillside through the tinder-dry bracken, Owen Davies jumped out of the way only just in time.

The crackling rose; the air was full of fumes and smoke and whirling black specks of charcoal and ash. Great heat shone out at them. They were all in a line beating at the flames, flailing away with all their might, yet only occasionally extinguishing a spark. John Rowlands shouted something desperately in Welsh; then seeing Will's uncomprehending  face near him, gasped out: 'We must drive it higher, before it can reach Prichard's! Keep it from the rock!'

Peering ahead at the great outsweeping rocky slope of Craig yr Aderyn, Will glimpsed for the first time the comer of a grey stone building jutting out beyond its far side. The light glinted on a spray of water flung up beside the house; someone was soaking the land all round it, in an effort to deaden the fire if it should reach that far. But Will, beating hopelessly with his long flat-tipped broom, felt that nothing could halt or check the inferno before them, snarling high over their heads now as it reached a tangle of blackberry bushes. It was like a huge beast raging over the mountain, gobbling up everything in its path with irresistible greed. It was so powerful, and they so small, that even the effort tor control its path seemed ludicrous. He thought: It is like the Dark - and for the first time found himself wondering how the fire could have begun.

Below them, from the road past the foot of the great Craig, came the clanging of a fire engine's bell, and Will glimpsed patches of bright red through the trees, and a hose snaking through the air. Men's voices were calling faintly and there was a sound of engines. But up here on the slope, the fire was gaining a greater hold, as the gusting wind caught it in patches, and gradually they were forced downwards, into the trees edging the road. In triumphant thunder the fire roared after them.

'Down the, road!' the thin man Tom Ellis called. 'Those trees will catch in a minute!'

Will panted along at John Rowlands's side. 'What will happen?'

'Burn itself out, eventually.' But the Welshman's creased face was grim.

Bran came trotting up at his other side, his white skin smudged and dirty. 'This wind is the trouble, taking it up the valley - is Prichard's place really in danger, Mr Rowlands?'

John Rowlands checked his stride for a moment, to gaze all round the sky. Clouds were forming in the blue air now, strange ragged dirty-white clouds that seemed to be coming from no one direction. 'I don't know ... the wind is for a change in the weather, and it is shifting, but hard to tell where... we shall have rain sooner or later.'

'Well,' Will said hopefully, 'the rain will put the fire out, won't it?' But as he spoke, he could hear the crackle and roar of the fire like laughter at his back, and he was not surprised when John Rowlands shook his head.

'Only a great deal of rain ... the ground is so dry, dry as it never is this time of year - nothing but a downpour will have any effect at all.' He looked round again, frowning at the mountains and the sky. 'Something is strange, about this fire and everything ... something is wrong...' He shook his shoulders, giving up the search, and strode on ahead as they rounded a bend and came towards the fire engine and its thunderous thrumming engine.

Will thought:  Ah, John Rowlands, you see more than you think you see; though not quite enough. The Dark Lord has begun his work in these mountains, the Grey King is building up a wall to enclose the golden harp, and, the Sleepers who must be wakened, so that 1 may not come to them and fulfil the quest. For if he can keep them from the reach of the Light, then the Old Ones will not come into their full power, and there will be none to keep the Dark from rising...

He said, without knowing that he spoke aloud: 'But it won't work!'

A voice said softly in his ear, 'What won't work?' Bran's dark smoky spectacles, shrouding the eyes behind, were staring into his face.

Will looked at him and said with sudden naked honesty, 'I don't know what to make of you.'

'I know you don't.' Bran said, a quirk of a smile twitching his strange pale face. 'But you're going to need me all the same.' He spun round, as smoke from the fire up the hillside came billowing down around them. 'Don't worry,' he said, grinning. 'Nobody else has ever known what to make of me either.' And he was off, spinning, running, almost dancing up the road towards the fire engine.

Will ran after him. And then in a moment both of them were brought up short by a sight more astonishing than any yet. Beneath the looming bulk of Craig yr Aderyn the firemen had two hoses playing, drenching both the mountain and the side of the road in an effort to check the fire from leaping over the Craig and down to Prichard's Farm. Others ran here and there with buckets, fire brooms, anything with which stray sparks might be drowned or beaten out before they gained a hold. The road was buzzing with anxious activity. Yet in the midst of it all, standing rigid and oblivious with fury, stood Caradog Prichard his red hair bristling, blood on his shirt and a shotgun levelled in one hand - and the other hand out rigid, pointing in accusation as he screamed with rage at John Rowlands.

'Bring me the dog! Bring him! I will prove to you that it was him, him and that freakish white hound of the freak boy Davies! I will show you! Six sheep in my field, there are six of them, with their throats ripped out, dammo, their heads half off - all for black joy, and that is what those bloody dogs had of it and that is what I shall shoot them for! Bring me them here! Bring them! And I will prove it to you!'

The boys stood frozen, gazing at him in horror; he was not for that moment a human being, but a frenzied creature possessed by rage, turned into an animal. All that could be seen in him was the urge to hurt, and it was, as it always will be, the most dreadful sight in the world.

Looking at Prichard with the eye of a human and the vision of an Old One, Will was filled with an overpowering compassion: an awareness of what must inevitably overtake Caradog Prichard if he were not checked, now, for always, in this passion before it was too late. Stop, he longed to call to him: stop, before the Grey King sees you and puts out his hand in friendship, and you, unwitting, take it and are destroyed. ..

Before he thought what he was doing he stepped forward, and the movement brought the red-haired man swinging towards him. The finger wheeled viciously round, jabbing at him through the air.

'You there too, Sais bach, you are part of it, you and your uncle's farm. They are Clwyd dogs, these murdering brutes, it is on all your heads, and I will have my due from all of you, from all of you -'

Spittle foamed at the comers of his mouth. There was no speaking to him. Will fell back, and with the fury of Prichard's shouting even the firefighters paused in amazement. There was no sound but the thump of the fire engine's pumping and the crackle of the approaching flames, and no movement for an instant anywhere. Then David Evans pushed forward, a small brisk form with a fire broom in his hand and smudges of soot on his face and shirt, and he took Prichard fearlessly by the shoulder and shook him, hard.

'The fire will be on us in minutes, Caradog Prichard - do you want your farm to burn? All of us here working our hands raw to keep the flames from your roof, and your wife inside there doing the same, and you stand here shouting your silly head off and think of nothing but a few dead sheep! A lot more dead sheep you will have, man, and a dead farm too, if you do not pull yourself together now. Now!'

Prichard gazed blankly at him, the small bright eyes squinting suspiciously in the pudgy face, and then he seemed gradually to wake up, and to realise where he was and what was happening. Dazed, he stared at the flames leaping closer beyond the hedge. The pump of the fire engine rose to a higher pitch, as the workers swung their hoses round to meet the advancing fire; sparks flew in all directions as the beaters thwacked frantically at the bracken. Caradog Prichard gave one short squeal of terror, turned, and rushed back towards his farmhouse.

Without a word Will and Bran rejoined the line of beaters, edging diagonally up the hillside in an effort to keep the fire from sweeping over and beyond the Craig. The sky was growing darker as the clouds thickened and the evening drew on, but there was no hint of rain. Again the wind gusted, dropped to nothing, rose in a sudden new gust; there was no telling what it would do next. More and more strongly Will could feel the enmity of the Grey King thrusting at him from the high peaks at the head of the valley; it made a wall as fierce as the wall of flames roaring towards them from the other direction, though the only one who could feel the force of both, the only one caught between the two, was the Old One, Will Stanton, bound by birth to follow this quest wherever it might lead.., He was swept up suddenly in a wild exhilaration, bringing energy from nowhere to harden his drooping arms and legs. Yelling with sudden glee, grinning madly at Bran, he whacked at the flames licking the bracken at his feet as if he could flatten them in an instant into the ground.

Then a flash of movement higher up the mountain caught his eyes away from the line of flame, and out of the bare rocks above he saw, flinging itself forward at astonishing speed, the form of a grey-white fox. Brush flying out behind, ears back; it leapt up the towering side of Craig yr Aderyn. Smoke billowed, rising on the wind, and the fox was gone. Will had seen it for only a quick moment.

He heard a high wail from Bran. 'Cafall!'

Then the Welsh boy was scrambling up the slope, ignoring cries of concern from below, ignoring the fire and the smoke and all else except the glimpse of the white animal he had thought was his dog.

'Bran, come back! It isn't Cafall!' Will climbed desperately after him, his heart thumping as if it would leap out of his chest. 'Bran! Come back!'

Steeper and steeper the slope grew, until they were upon the Craig itself, scrambling through bracken, over slippery grass, round jutting shelves of grey rock. Bran paused at last on one of these, panting, staring wildly about him. Will stumbled up beside him, hardly able to speak.

'Cafall!' Bran shouted into nowhere.

'It wasn't Cafall, Bran.'

'Of course it was. I saw him.'

'It was a fox, Bran. One of the milgwn. Bran, it's a trick, don't you see?'

Will coughed, choking in a billowy gust of smoke from the black cloud that wreathed round the slope behind and below them. They could see nothing but smoke and the steep rock, with patches of grey sky above their heads. Below, there was no sign of the farm or men or the valley, and in their ears no sound but the sighing of the wind, and somewhere the harsh faint voices of birds.

Bran looked at Will uncertainly.

'Bran, I'm sure of it.'

'All right. I was so certain... I'm sorry.'

'Don't be. It wasn't you seeing. It was the Grey King making you see. But the trouble is, we can't go back that way, the fire's coming up after us -'

'There is a way down the other side,' Bran said, brushing sweat from his eyes. 'No bracken for the fire to burn there, just rock. But it's hard going.' He looked doubtfully at Will's pale smudged face.

'I'm all right. Go on, go on.'

They clambered on up the rough stairway of grass and rock, holding on now with both hands and feet.

'There's a bird's nest here!' Will had glimpsed an untidy pile of twigs and bracken a foot from his head.

There'd be birds too, if it weren't for the fire. It's a nesting place in spring, I told you. Not just the cormorants - ravens too. Lots of birds ... which is why they call it Bird Rock, of course. Here -' Bran paused upright on a broad shelf of rock, edged with bracken. 'This is the ridge. It goes down the other side towards Prichard's Farm.'

But Will was standing very still, looking at him. 'Bird Rock?'

That's right,' Bran said, surprised. 'Bird Rock. Craig yr Aderyn, rock of the birds. I thought you knew that.'

Will said softly, reflectively:

'On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,

Must the youngest open the oldest hills

Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks .. .'

Bran stared at him. 'You mean ... the door of the birds ... here?'

'Bird rock. It must be. I know it. And this is the day of the dead -' Will swung his head sharply, gazing up at the sky where clouds flew like grey puffs of smoke. 'And the wind's changing, feel... No... Yes, there again... A bad wind, a wind from the Dark. I don't like it. Bran, it has the Grey King in it.' He spoke now with no thought of Bran as anything but an ally, ever,

The white-haired boy said bleakly, 'It's swinging to the north. That is the worst wind of all, the north wind. Gwynt Traed yr Meirw, they call it, the wind that blows round the feet of the dead. It brings storms. And worse, sometimes.'

The distant crackling of the fire seemed louder now. Will glanced over his shoulder, down the hill; the smoke was thicker there, and he felt more heat in the air. The wind whirled in gusts, catching up cinders and soot from below into strange dark eddies round their heads. All at once Will knew with dreadful certainty that the Grey King was aware of him, precisely aware, gathering his power for attack - and that it was at that first moment of awareness that the fire on the mountain had begun. He flinched in a sudden sense of fearful loneliness. An Old One, alone without others of the Light,, was vulnerable to the Dark at its strongest. Though he could not be destroyed for all time, yet he could be disarmed; the full power of a Lord of the Dark could, if it struck him defenceless, blast him out of Time for so great a space that he could be of no help to his fellows until too late. So the Grey King struck now at Will with fire, and with all else that might be at his command,

And Bran was more vulnerable yet. Will swung back quickly. 'Bran, come on, along the ridge to the top. Before the fire -'

His voice died in his throat. Silently on to the ridge round them, out of holes and crevices, round corners and crags, came slinking the grey-white ghostly shapes of the milgwn, more than a score of them: heads held low, teeth grinning, a white tip glimmering on each stiffly-held grey bushy tail. Their foxy smell was in the air stronger than the smoke. At their head stood the king fox, their leader, red tongue lolling from a mouth set in a wide dreadful grin, its white teeth long as fingers and sharp as nails, icicles of bone. The eyes were bright; the ruff stood out white round the huge shoulders and neck.

Will clenched his fists, shouting angry words of power in the Old Speech, but the great grey fox did not flinch. Instead it made a sudden sharp leap into the air, straight up on the one spot, as Will had once seen a fox do in a Buckinghamshire field, far away from this valley, to discover what danger lurked in a field of wheat higher than its head. As it jumped, the king fox gave one short, sharp bark, deep and clear. The milgwn snarled low. And an abrupt whoof of flame shot up at Will's side with a sound like tearing cloth, as the fire on the mountain burst at last on the ridge of Craig yr Aderyn and roared crackling round them in the bracken.

Will shrank back. There was no way of escape but past the king fox. And the big fox crouched motionless, low on its belly, tensing itself to spring.

There was a sudden piercing yell at Will's shoulder. Bran leapt forward, waving in his hand a crooked branch of scrub oak blazing like tinder, a sheaf of flame; he thrust it full into the grey fox's face. Screaming, the animal fell back amongst its fellows, and the foxes milled in confusion. Before the branch could bum down to his arm, Bran flung it aside. But unexpectedly, caught by a gust of wind, it fell over the opposite side of the ridge, down towards the unburned slope. Out it went and over the edge, and down to the far side of the Craig where the fire might not otherwise have gone. There was a gasp of flame as the fire took hold on its new prey. Bran wailed in horror.

'Will! I've been and sent the fire down to Prichard's Farm - we're cut off both ways!'

'The top!' Will called urgently. 'We must get to the top!' With all the certainty of ancient instincts he knew the place they must find; it had begun compellingly to call to him, unseen, waking to his quest. He knew what it would look like; he knew what he must do when they reached it. But the reaching was another matter. Flames crackled at either side of them, scorching their dry skin; ahead, the milgwn gathered now in a tight semicircle, waiting, waiting -

Desperately Will put protection about himself and Bran, standing foursquare facing the north and calling some words in the Old Speech: it was the Spell of Helledd, to give freedom to a wanderer against any compulsion by those holding the land over which he roamed. But there was not much hope in him; he knew it could not hold for long. Beside him he heard Bran give a great imploring shout, like a small child calling for help without knowing that he calls.

'Cafall! Cafall!'

And out of nowhere along the ridge towards them came a white streak, leaping at the nearest fox, charging it sideways, so that it spun round with a shriek rolling over and over. The tight semicircle wavered, uncertain. Cafall leapt snarling at the next fox, his jaws closing quick and hard on its shoulder, and the animals squealed dreadfully and twisted away. There in the rent he had torn in the rank of the milgwn the white dog stood, belligerent as a bull, with his legs planted firm on the rock, and the message glinting in his strange silvery eyes was clear. Will grabbed Bran by the arm and slipped out with him past Cafall, free, while the panting foxes hesitated.

'Up here, Bran, quick! It's the only place!'

Bran's eyes flickered over black earth and white fur, dark hills and grey sky; he saw the great king fox of the milgwn watching them, controlled again, poised for pursuit. Then Cafall, curving to face the animal, began a long crescendo snarl more bloodcurdling than any sound Bran had ever heard in his life. In fulfilment of some long destiny, the dog was making it possible for them to escape. There was no excuse not to obey. With a sudden flooding of trust and humility, Bran turned and scrambled upwards after Will.

Clambering on hands and feet over the rocky ridge. Will made for the place to which they must go; it sang to him, beckoning. Below the rocks to which they clung, smoke swirled like a dark sea; high above, unseen birds screamed and cawed in angry fear. When he could climb no further. Will saw a narrow overhung cleft in the rocks before him, a long slit broadened and eroded by frost and wind and rain. Its grey granite sides were green-patched with lichen. Irresistibly, it summoned him.

He called to Bran: 'In here!' Then his voice rose louder, commanding. 'Cafall!'

The granite sides of the cleft towered three times higher than his head. Entering, Will glanced back over his shoulder; he saw Bran following, bemused, and then a quick white shape slipping after him, as Cafall darted forward, nuzzling his nose briefly into Bran's hand as he passed. Outside on the rock, a shrieking tumult of baffled rage rose from the furious milgwn, prevented from entry. Their master's power, Will now knew, was a power over the rock and the mountains and all the high places of Gwynedd; but only over those. Inside the rock and the mountain was a different domain.

He went on. At its far end, the rocky cleft widened a little. The light was dim. Things seemed indistinct, as if in a dream. Outside, the foxes barked and screamed. And then there was nothing more ahead of Will but bare grey rock: a formidable blank wall, ending the cleft. Will stared at the rock, and his mind filled with a warmth of discovery and relief as intense as joy. The dog Cafall was at his side, standing straight and proud as a young horse. Will dropped one hand to rest on the white head. The other arm he raised before him, with fingers stiff outstretched in a gesture of command, and he called out three words in the Old Speech.

And before him, the rock parted, like a great gate, to a faint, very faint sound of delicate music that was achingly familiar and yet strange, gone as soon as it was heard. Will walked forward through the rocky doors, with Cafall trotting confidently beside him, head high and tail waving. And Bran, a little hesitantly, followed them.

Part One: The Golden Harp

Bird Rock

There was no way of telling whether they were deep inside Craig yr Aderyn, or had walked through the grey rocky doors into another place and time. It did not matter to Will. Exhilaration was pulsing through him, in this the true beginning of his first full quest as an Old One. Turning to look back, he saw without surprise that the doors through which they had come were no longer there. The rocky wall at the end of the chamber where they now stood was smooth and unbroken, and upon it, high up, there hung a round golden shield, glinting dully in a light that came from somewhere deep within the room.

Will looked tentatively at Bran, but the Welsh boy seemed unperturbed. His pale face was oddly vulnerable without its protective glasses, but Will could read no expression in the catlike eyes; he felt once more an intense curiosity about this strange boy with no colour in him, born into the Dark-haunted valley - mortal, and yet also a creature foreknown by the Old Ones centuries before. How was it that he. Will, an Old One himself, could sense so little of Bran's nature?

'You okay?' he said.

'I'm all right,' said Bran. He was looking up at the walls, beyond Will. 'Duw,' he said softly. 'Beautiful. Look at those.'

It was a long, empty room. On its walls hung four tapestries, two to each side, their rich colours so deeply gleaming that they too seemed to shimmer in the half-light, like the golden shield. Will blinked in recognition at the images embroidered there, rich as stained glass: a silver unicorn, a field of red roses, a glowing golden sun...

All the light in this room seemed, he now saw, to come from only one flame. In an iron holder jutting from the stone wall near the end of the room, a single tremendous candle stood. It was several feet high, and it burned with a white unwavering flame of intense brilliance. The long shadow of the candle lay over wall and floor, motionless, undancing. Its stillness, Will realised, was the stillness of the High Magic, a power beyond Light or Dark or any allegiance - the strongest and most remote force in the universe, which soon in this place he and Bran must face.

There was a faint whistling whine at his side, scarcely audible. He looked down, and saw the dog Cafall gazing backwards at Bran.

Will said softly, 'Go on, then.'

The dog's cold nose nudged his hand, and Cafall turned and trotted briskly back to his master, waving his tail. Bran thrust his fingers into the fur of the dog's head in quick fierce affection, and Will knew that for all his calm appearance there was in his mind an uncertainty approaching panic, which Cafall had sensed and sought to reassure. Will felt a quick tug of sympathy for Bran, but there was no time for explanations. He knew he must trust his instinctive feeling that, in the last resort, the strange remoteness always apparent in Bran would prove to be the strangeness of great strength.

He said aloud, without turning, 'This way.' Then he walked firmly down the long lofty chamber. Bran followed with Cafall; Will could hear the footsteps ringing with his own on the stone-paved floor. He reached the tall candle in the wall. Its iron holder was set into the stone at the level of his shoulder; the smooth white sides of the candle reached far higher, high above his head, so that the white flame glowed up there like a bright full moon.

Will paused. 'First the moon,' he said. 'Then stars and, if all is well, a comet, and then the dust of the stars. And at the last, the sun.'

'What?' said Bran.

Will glanced across without really seeing. Behind his eyes he was looking into his own mind and memory, not at Bran. Here in this place he was an Old One, occupied with the affairs of the Light; nothing else had very much relevance. He said, 'It is the order of things, by which the High Magic shall be known. So that none may come within reach of it except by birthright.'

Bran said, 'I still don't know what you're talking about.' Then he shook his head in quick nervous apology. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound -'

'It doesn't matter,' Will said. 'Just follow. You'll see.'

The footsteps rang out again, and then they were at the end of the long room and there was nothing before them but a blank hole in the floor. Bran peered at it dubiously.

Will said, 'Do what I do.' He sat on the edge of the rough rectangular opening in the floor, and in a few moments he could see a staircase, running downwards at a steep angle. Cautiously lowering himself, he found the stairway was narrow and dark; it was like going down into a well. When he put out a hand to either side, each hand at once touched rock, and the rock of the roof too was very close to his head. He went slowly down. In a moment he could hear Bran's careful steps following, and the soft scratch of Cafall's paws. For a little while the glimmer from the upper chamber reached down after them, casting wavering patterns of shadow on the close walls, but soon even that faded, and there was no light in the stair tunnel at all. In its sides, Will's fingers found two smooth channels carved to form balustrades, a steadying refuge for the hands of anyone descending. He said quietly, his voice eerily echoing, 'Bran, if you put your hands out-'

'I've found them,' Bran said. 'Like banisters, aren't they? Bright idea of somebody's, that.' The words were cool, but there was tension behind them. Their voices boomed gently in the stairway, muffled as if by mist.

Will said, 'Go carefully. I may stop in a hurry.' He was straining to hear the voice of his instincts; random images and impressions flickered in and out of his mind. Something was calling him, something close, close -

He put out a hand in front of him, just in time to save himself from coming hard up against a blank wall of rock. There was no other stair ahead: only a stony dead end.

"What is it?' said Bran, behind.

'Wait a moment.' An instruction was growing inside Will's memory, like an echo from another world. Standing with his feet planted firmly on the last stair, he put the palms of both hands flat against the rough unseen rock-face barring their way, and he pushed. At the same time he said certain words in the Old Speech that came into his mind.

And the rock parted, silently, as it had when the great doors opened silently on Bird Rock, though no music sounded here. With Bran and Cafall at his heels. Will stepped forward into a faint glow of light that caught him into such wonder that he could only stand and gaze.

They were no longer where they had been. They stood somewhere in another time, on the roof of the world. All around them was the open night sky, like a huge black inverted bowl, and in it blazed the stars, thousand upon thousand brilliant prickles of fire. Will heard Bran draw in a quick breath. They stood, looking up. The stars blazed round them. There was no sound anywhere, in all the immensity of space. Will felt a wave of giddiness; it was as though they stood on the last edge of the universe, and if they fell, they would fall out of Time... As he gazed about him, gradually he

recognised the strange inversion of reality in which they were held. He and Bran were not standing in a timeless dark night observing the stars in the heavens. It was the other way around. They themselves were observed. Every blazing point in that great depthless hemisphere of stars and suns was focused upon them, contemplating, considering, judging. For by following the quest for the golden harp, he and Bran were challenging the boundless might of the High Magic of the universe. They must stand unprotected before it, on their way, and they would be allowed to pass only if they had the right by birth. Under that merciless starlight of infinity, any unrightful challenger would be brushed into nothingness as effortlessly as a man might brush an ant from his sleeve.

Will stood, waiting. There was nothing else that he could do. He looked for friends in the sky. He found the Eagle and the Bull, with Aldebaran glowing red and the Pleiades glimmering; he saw Orion brandish his club high, encouraging, with Betelgeuse and Rigel winking at shoulder and toe. He saw the Swan and the Eagle flying towards one another along the bright path of the Milky Way; he saw the hazy hint of distant Andromeda, and Earth's near neighbours Tau Ceti and Procyon, and Sirius the dog star. In longing hope Will gazed at them; in hope and in salutation, for during his time of learning the ways of an Old One he had flown amongst them all.

Then the sky wheeled, and the stars slanted and changed; now the Centaur galloped overhead, and the blue double star Acrux supporting the Southern Cross. The Hydra stretched lazily over the heavens, with the Lion marching by, and the great Ship sailed its leisurely, eternal way. And at last a brilliant point of light, with a long curving tail, came blazing into view over half the inverted bowl of the sky, moving past in a long stately progress; and Will knew that he and Bran had survived their first ordeal.

He pressed Bran's arm briefly, and saw a flicker of reflected light as the white head turned.

'It is a comet!' Bran whispered.

Will said softly back, 'Wait. There's more, if all is well.'

The long flaring tail of the comet moved gradually out of sight, down over the horizon of their nameless world and time. Still in the black hemisphere the stars blazed and slowly wheeled; beneath them Will felt so infinitesimally small that it seemed impossible he should even exist. Immensity pressed in on him, terrifying, threatening - and then, in a swift flash of movement like dance, like the glint of a leaping fish, came a flick of brightness in the sky from a shooting star. Then another, and another, here, there, all around. He heard Bran give a small chirrup of delight, a spark struck from the same bright sudden joy that filled his own being. Wish on a star, said a tiny voice in his head from some long-departed day of early childhood: Wish on a star - the cry of a pleasure and faith as ancient as the eyes of man.

'Wish on a falling star,' said Bran soft in his ear. All around them the meteors briefly died and vanished, as tiny points of stardust in the long travel of their cloud struck the aery halo of the earth, burned bright and were gone.

I wish, said Will fiercely in his mind: I wish... Oh, I wish...

And all the bright starlit sky was gone, in a flicker of time that they could not catch, and darkness came around them so fast that they blinked in disbelief at its thick nothingness. They were back on the staircase beneath Bird Rock, with stone steps under their feet and a curved stone balustrade smooth to the sightless touch of their hands. And as Will stretched out one hand groping before him, he found no blank wall of stone there to bar his way, but free open space.

Slowly, faltering, he went on down the dark stairway, and Bran and Cafall followed him.

Then very gradually faint light began to filter up from below. Will saw a glimmer from the walls enclosing them; then the shape of the steps beneath his feet; then, appearing round a curve in the long tunnelling stairway, the bright circle that marked its end. The light grew brighter, the circle larger; Will felt his steps become quicker and more eager, and mocked himself, but could not help it.

Then instinct caught him into caution, and on the last few steps of the staircase, before the light, he stopped. Behind him he heard Bran and the dog stop too, at once. Will stood listening to his senses, trying to catch the source of warning, He saw, without properly seeing, that the steps on which they stood had been carved out of the rock with immense care and symmetry, perfectly angled, smooth as glass, every detail as clear as if the rock had been cut only the day before. Yet there was a noticeable hollow in the centre of each step, which could only have been worn by centuries of passing feet. Then he ceased to notice such things, for awareness caught at him out of the deepest comer of his mind and told him what he must do.

Carefully Will pushed up the left sleeve of his sweater as far as the elbow, leaving the forearm bare. On the underside of his arm shone the livid scar that had once been accidentally burned there like a brand: the sign of the Light, a circle quartered by a cross. In a deliberate slow gesture, half defensive, half defiant, he raised this arm crooked before his face, as if shielding his eyes from bright light, or warding off an unexpected blow. Then he walked down the last few steps of the staircase and out into the light. As he stepped to the floor, he felt a shock of sensation like nothing he had ever known. A flare of white brilliance blinded him, and was gone; a brief tremendous thunder dazed his ears, and was gone; a force like a blast wave from some great explosion briefly tore at his body, and was gone. Will stood still, breathing fast. He knew that beneath his singular protection, he had brought them through the last door of the High Magic: a living barrier that would consume any unsought intruder in a gasp of energy as unthinkable as the holocaust of the sun. Then he looked into the room before him, and for a moment of illusion thought that he saw the sun itself.

It was an immense cavernous room, high-roofed, lit by flaring torches thrust into brackets on the stone walls, and hazy with smoke. The smoke came from the torches. Yet in the centre of the floor burned a great glowing fire, alone, with no chimney or fireplace to contain it. It gave no smoke at all, but burned with a white light of such brilliance that Will could not look straight at it. No intense heat came from this fire, but the air was filled with the aromatic scent of burning wood, and there was the crackling, snapping sound of a log fire.

Will came forward past the fire, beckoning Bran to follow; then stopped abruptly as he saw what lay ahead.

Hazy at the end of the chamber three figures sat, in three great thrones that seemed to be fashioned out of smooth grey-blue Welsh slate. They did not move. They appeared to be men, dressed in long hooded robes of differing shades of blue. One robe was dark, one was light, and the robe between them was the shifting greenish-blue of a summer sea. Between the three thrones stood two intricately carved wooden chests. At first there seemed to be nothing else in the huge room, but after a moment of gazing Will knew that there was movement in the deep shadows beyond the fire, in the darkness all around the three illuminated lords. These were the bright figures on a dark canvas, lit to catch the eye; beyond them in the darkness other things of unknown nature lurked.

He could tell nothing of the nature of the three figures, beyond sensing great power. Nor could his senses as an Old One penetrate the surrounding darkness. It was as if an invisible barrier stood all around them, through which no enchantment might reach.

Will stood a little way before the thrones, looking up. The faces of the three lords were hidden in the shadows of their hooded robes. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the soft crackle of the burning fire; then out of the shadows a deep voice said, 'We greet you. Will Stanton. And we name you by the sign. Will Stanton, Sign-seeker.'

'Greetings,' Will said, in as strong and clear a voice as he could muster, and he pulled down his sleeve over his scarred arm. 'My lords,' he said, 'it is the day of the dead.'

'Yes,' said the figure in the lightest blue robe. His face seemed thin in the shadows of his hood, the eyes gleaming, and his voice was light, sibilant, hissing. 'Yesssssss ...' Echoes whispered like snakes out of the dark, as if a hundred other little hissing voices came from nameless shapes behind him, and Will felt the small hairs rise on the back of his neck. Behind him he heard Bran give a muffled involuntary moan, and knew that horror must be creeping like a white mist through his mind. Will's strength as an Old One rebelled. He said in quick cold reproach, 'My lord?'

The horror fell away, like a cloud whisked off by the wind, and the lord in the light blue robe softly laughed. Will stood there frowning at him, unmoved: a small stocky boy in jeans and sweater, who nonetheless knew himself to possess power worthy of meeting these three. He said, confident now, 'It is the day of the dead, and the youngest has opened the oldest hills, through the door of the birds. And has been let pass by the eye of the High Magic. I have come for the golden harp, my lords.'

The second figure in the sea-blue robe said, 'And the raven boy with you.'

'Yes.'

Will turned to Bran, standing hesitantly nearer the fire, and beckoned him. Bran came forward very slowly, feet as unwilling as if they swam against treacle, and stood at his side. The light from the torches on the walls shone in his white hair.

The lord in the sea-blue robe leaned forward a little from his throne; they glimpsed a keen, strong face and a pointed grey beard. He said, astonishingly, 'Cafall?'

At Bran's side the white dog stood erect and quivering. He did not move an inch forward, as if obeying some inner instruction that told him his place, but his tail waved furiously from side to side as it never waved for anyone but Bran. He gave a soft, small whine.

White teeth glinted in the hooded face. 'He is well named. Well named.'

Bran said jealously, in sudden fierce anxiety, 'He is my dog!' Then he added, rather muffled, 'My lord.' Will could feel the alarm in him at his own temerity.

But the laughter from the shadows was kindly. 'Never fear, boy. The High Magic would never take your dog from you. Certainly the Old Ones would not either, and the Dark might try but would not succeed.' He leaned forward suddenly, so that for an instant the strong, bearded face was clear; the voice softened, and there was an aching sadness in it. 'Only the creatures of the earth take from one another, boy. All creatures, but men more than any. Life they take, and liberty, and all that another man may have - sometimes through greed, sometimes through stupidity, but never by any volition but their own. Beware your own race, Bran Davies - they are the only ones who will ever harm you, in the end.'

Dread stirred in Will as he felt the deep sadness in the voice, for there was a compassion in it directed solely at Bran, as if the Welsh boy stood at the edge of some long sorrow. He had a quick sense of a mysterious closeness between these two, and knew that the lord in the sea-blue robe was trying to give Bran strength and help, without being able to explain why. Then the hooded figure leaned abruptly back, and the mood was gone.

Will said huskily, 'Nevertheless, my lord, the rights of that race have always been the business of the Light. And in quest of them I claim the golden harp.'

The soft-voiced lord in the lightest robe, who had spoken first, swiftly stood. His cloak swirled round him like a blue mist; bright eyes glinted from the thin pale face glimmering in the hood.

'Answer the three riddles as the law demands, Old One, you and the White Crow your helper there, and the harp shall be yours. But if you answer wrong, the doors of rock shall close, and you be left defenceless on the cold mountain, and the harp shall be lost to the Light forever.'

'We shall answer,' Will said.

'You, boy, the first.' The blue mist swirled again. A bony finger was thrust pointing at Bran, and the shadowed hood turned. Will turned too, anxiously; he had half expected this,

Bran gasped. 'Me? But - but I -'

Will reached out and touched his arm. He said gently, 'Try. Only try. We are here only to try. If the answer is asleep in you, it will wake. If it is not, no matter. But try.'

Bran stared at him unsmiling, and Will saw his throat move as he swallowed. Then the white head turned back again. 'All right.'

The soft, sibilant voice said, 'Who are the Three Elders of the World?'

Will felt Bran's mind reel in panic, as he tried to find meaning in the words. There was no way to offer help. In this place, the law of the High Magic prevented an Old One from putting the smallest thought or image into another mind: Will was permitted only to overhear. So, tense, he stood overhearing the turmoil of his friend's thoughts, as they tossed about desperately seeking order.

Bran struggled. The Three Elders of the World ... somewhere he knew ... it was strange and yet familiar, as if somewhere he had seen, or read ... the three oldest creatures, the three oldest things ... he had read it at school, and he had read it in Welsh... the oldest things...

He took his glasses from his shirt pocket, as if fiddling with them could clear his mind, and he saw staring up out of them the reflection of his own eyes. Strange eyes ... creepy eyes, they called them at school. At school. At school... Strange round tawny eyes, like the eyes of an owl. He put the glasses slowly back in his pocket, his mind groping at an echo. At his side, Cafall shifted very slightly, his head moving so that it touched Bran's hand. The fur brushed his fingers lightly, Very lightly, like the flick of feathers. Feathers. Feathers. Feathers...

He had it.

Will, at his side, felt in his own mind the echoing flood of relief, and struggled to contain his delight.

Bran stood up straight and cleared his throat. "The Three Elders of the World,' he said, 'are the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, the Eagle of Gwernabwy, and the Blackbird of Celli Gadarn.'

Will said softly, 'Oh, well done! Well done!'

'That is right,' said the thin voice above them, unemotionally. Like an early-morning sky the light blue robe swirled before them, and the figure sank back into its throne.

From the central throne rose the lord in the sea-blue robe; stepping forward, he looked down at Will. Behind its grey beard his face seemed oddly young, though its skin was brown and weathered like the skin of a sailor long at sea.

'Will Stanton,' he said, 'who were the three generous men of the Island of Britain?'

Will stared at him. The riddle was not impossible; he knew that the answer lay somewhere in his memory, stored from the great Book of Gramarye, treasure book of the enchantment of the Light that had been destroyed as soon as he, the last of the Old Ones, had been shown what it held. Will set his mind to work, searching. But at the same time a deeper riddle worried at him. Who was this lord in the sea-blue robe, with his close interest in Bran? He knew about Cafall ... clearly he was a lord of the High Magic, and yet there was a look about him of... a look of...

Will pushed the wondering aside. The answer to the riddle had surfaced in his memory.

He said clearly, "The three generous men of the Island of Britain. Nudd the Generous, son of Senllyt. Mordaf the Generous, son of Serwan. Rhydderch the Generous, son of Tydwal Tudglyd. And Arthur himself was more generous than the three.'

Deliberately on the last line his voice rang echoing through the hall like a bell.

That is right,' said the bearded lord. He looked thoughtfully at Will and seemed about to say more, but instead he only nodded slowly. Then sweeping his robe about him in a sea-blue wave, he stepped back to his throne.

The hall seemed darker, filled with dancing shadows from the flickering light of the fire. A sudden flash and crackle came from behind the boys, as a log fell and the flames leapt up; instinctively Will glanced back. When he turned forward again, the third figure, who had not spoken or moved until now, was standing tall and silent before his throne. His robe was a deep, deep blue, darkest of the three, and his hood was pulled so far forward that there was no hint of his face visible, but only shadow.

His voice was deep and resonant, like the voice of a cello, and it brought music into the hall.

'Will Stanton,' it said, 'what is the shore that fears the sea?'

Will started impulsively forward, his hands clenching into fists, for this voice caught into the deepest part of him. Surely, surely ... but the face in the hood was hidden, and he was denied all ways of recognition. Any part of his senses that tried to reach out to the great thrones met a blank wall of refusal from the High Magic. Once more Will gave up, and put his mind to the last riddle.

He said slowly. The shore that fears the sea...'

Images wavered in and out of his mind: great crashing waves against a rocky coast.... the green light in the ocean, the realm of Tethys, where strange creatures may live ... a gentler sea then, washing in long slow waves an endless golden beach. The shore ... the beach ... the beach...

The image wavered and changed. It dissolved into a green dappled forest of gnarled ancient trees, their broad trunks smooth with a curious light grey bark. Their leaves danced above, new, soft, bright with a delicate green that had in it all of springtime. The beginnings of triumph whispered in Will's mind.

'The shore,' he said. 'The beach where the sea washes. But also it is a wood, of lovely fine grain, that is in the handle of a chisel and the legs of a chair, the head of a broom and the pad of a workhorse saddle. And I dare swear too that those two chests between your thrones are carved of it. The only places where it may not be used are beneath the open sky and upon the open sea, for this wood loses its virtue if soaked by water. The answer to your riddle, my lord, is the wood of the beech tree.'

The flames leaped up in the fire behind them, and suddenly the hall was brilliant. Joy and relief seemed to surge through the air. The first two blue-robed lords rose from their thrones to stand beside the third; like three towers they loomed hooded over the boys. Then the third lord flung back the hood of his deep blue robe, to reveal a fierce hawk-nosed head with deep-set eyes and a shock of wild white hair. And the High Magic's barrier against recognition fell away.

Will cried joyously, 'Merriman!'

He leapt forward to the tall figure as a small child leaps to its father, and clasped his outstretched hands. Merriman smiled down at him.

Will laughed aloud in delight. 'I knew,' he said. 'I knew. And yet -'

'Greetings, Old One.' Merriman said. 'Now you are grown fully into the Circle, by this. Had you failed in this part of the quest, all else would have been lost.' The bleak, hard lines of his face were softened by affection; his dark eyes blazed like black torches. Then he turned to Bran, taking him by the shoulders. Bran looked up at him, pale and expressionless.