LITMIR.BIZ

      “The door will be open as long as you hold it in your memory,” said Malebron.

      “Aren’t you coming?” said Roland.

      “No. That light is death in Elidor. It will not harm you, but be ready. We have word of something merciless here, though we do not know what it is.”

      Beyond the dolmen arch a straight and level passage went into the hill.

      “You will wait?” said Roland.

      “I shall wait.”

      “I’m frightened.”

      The idea of stooping into that narrow opening in the ground choked his breath. He would be hemmed in by rock, the walls leaned, and there would be earth piled over his head, earth on top of him, pressing him down, crushing him. The walls would crush him. He tasted clay in his mouth.

      “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t go in. Take me back. It’s nothing to do with me. It’s your world, and it’s all dead.”

      “No!” said Malebron. “Gorias lives!”

      But the golden castle was shrouded in Roland’s mind, and its flames were too far away to warm the pallor of the Mound.

      “Find someone else! Not me! It’s nothing to do with me!”

      “It is,” said Malebron. “Our worlds are different, but they are linked in subtle ways, and the death of Elidor would not be without its echo in your world.”

      “I don’t care! It’s nothing to do with me!”

      “It is,” said Malebron. His voice was hard. “Your sister and your brothers are in the Mound.”

      Roland saw the glove lying, free now, below the grey spirals.

      “They went, each in their turn,” said Malebron. “Time is different here.”

      “What’s happened to them?” said Roland.

      “They have failed. But you are stronger than any of them.”

      “I’m not.”

      “Here, in Elidor, you are stronger.”

      “Do you mean that?” said Roland.

      “Much stronger. You will go.”

      “Yes,” said Roland. Now that there was no choice, the panic left him.

      “Take this spear,” said Malebron. “The last Treasure for the last chance. It will give comfort beyond the temper of its blade.”

      Roland held the spear. Fires moved deep in the metal, and its edge was a rainbow.

      “What are the other Treasures?” said Roland.

      “A sword, a cauldron, and a stone. Except these, trust nothing. And do not think twice to use the spear: for little you may meet in Vandwy can be good.”

      The light in the Mound was white and soft, and appeared to come from nowhere, which made the passage indistinct, without texture or shadows. There was nothing on which Roland could focus. Sometimes he felt that he was not moving; at others that he had travelled a long way – much further than was possible if he had gone straight into the Mound. When he looked back the doorway was lost in the thick light.