Then Malcoff spoke, and there was a tremor in his voice.

‘They have done well,’ he said, ‘though I am deeply sad to have lost so many. And now you must go, Nab. Take care; you now have the three Faradawn and are at your most vulnerable. Dearly would Dréagg like to take you at this time. You should be on Mount Ivett by nightfall. Farewell; perhaps we shall all meet again some day.’

Sadly Nab turned north and began to make his way towards the distant peak on the skyline, pausing before he was out of sight to turn round and take a last look at the Tor. There was only Malcoff sitting where Nab had left him with the great golden eagle perched on a rock to his right. The Elflord was looking towards him and, when he saw Nab turn, he raised his hand and waved slowly. The boy waved back before he rounded a hill and the Tor was lost from sight.

By the middle of the afternoon Nab was on the lower slopes of the great peak which towered high above. He was tired; his legs ached and his breath rasped as it came from his weary lungs. The sun had long been lost behind great dark banks of clouds that came rolling in from the north, and an icy wind blew down from the mountain. He sat down on a rock to have a rest and wondered again, as he had constantly since he left the Tor, how the others were getting on. He missed them terribly, hardly believing that they were not with him and feeling as though a part of him was gone. He had begun to imagine, a while back, that they actually were walking at his side and he had started to talk to them, making up conversations as he crossed the rough stony ground.

As he sat looking out over the bleak mountain side he slowly became aware of a thick damp mist descending from the slopes above. He watched it come down, fascinated by the steady pace at which it moved, covering everything in its path. One minute everything was clear and the next it had vanished behind this thick dark grey wall. He saw it rolling towards him and felt it envelop him with its wet clammy tentacles as it moved on down the hill. A cold chill went through his body, partly from the mist but also because he suddenly realized that he could see nothing in any direction except the few paces of ground in front of him; the peak was completely lost from view. He looked around desperately but there was no way in which he could tell the right direction to travel. ‘Still, if we make sure we’re always walking uphill, we can’t go far wrong,’ he said out loud, to an imaginary Brock. ‘Come on then,’ and he got up from the rock and began to move very slowly in what he hoped was an upwards path. He had thought that keeping his feet pointing uphill would be easy but he was surprised to find that after only a few steps it became extremely hard. The difficulty was caused by the little dips and hollows which kept occurring in the general upward slope. When he came to these and felt his feet going down he would turn around and go up a few paces only to find that he was going down again.

After this happened a number of times a growing sense of panic began to swell up in his stomach and he had to fight hard to control it. Terrible memories of the walk through the Marshes of Blore came back to him. At least then he had been with the others, now he was utterly on his own.

He tried again, putting one foot carefully in front of the other on the stones and scrub on the ground. This time he walked for a while and was just beginning to gain confidence again when he started to go downhill. ‘It’ll only be a small dip,’ he said to himself. ‘In a few steps we’ll start to go up again.’ But the slope went down and down so, thinking that he had been walking up the side of a hollow at first, he turned and re-traced his steps back up only to find that when he went down the side he had originally walked up it went on for ever. Now he was really frightened and suddenly, as if for the first time, the enormous weight of the responsibility he was under came to him. Before, there had always been the others to share it with, but now it was his and his alone. He could not let them down, all those who had given their lives to protect him and and those who were now playing their part so that he might succeed. He stopped, his heart beating violently at the crushing thought of failure. Failure! Pictures of Bruin and Rufus and Sam flashed into his mind so clearly they could almost have been there with him and an overwhelming shadow of misery closed around his mind with a grip like an iron vice. The mist seemed to be growing thicker all the time and his body was so damp and cold that he began to shiver uncontrollably. He sat down on the ground and, burying his face in his hands, allowed despair to take him over.

He stayed like that for a long time until he felt something indefinable penetrate his numbness and make him look up. Then he saw, through the mist, a warm welcoming golden glow. His heart leapt with joy – Ashgaroth! It could only be he. He got up and began to make his way towards the faint flicker of light which seemed to beckon him on. As he walked he became mesmerized by it and could see nothing else and feel nothing else except the warmth of that light. It drew him on so that his feet felt as if they were walking on the mist and his body floated through the moist atmosphere. He was no longer tired or miserable or afraid; he was suddenly invincible. He could have gone on for ever, such was the power and strength that surged through his body even to his fingertips. He seemed to grow so that when he looked down, the ground below him was very far away. He strode effortlessly over valleys and gorges, deep ravines and raging rivers and high mountains; they were all his playthings far below. Dimly, through this haze of euphoria, he could sense that the source of his energy was centred around his middle, where the Belt of Ammdar was securely buckled, and had he looked he would have seen the hasp glowing with that same golden light that beckoned to him in the distance and that now shone also in his mind. On, on he walked until there was nothing else but the joy of this effortless travel in his brain. Everything was forgotten; the Urkku, the Eldron, Ashgaroth, Dréagg, the Elves; even Beth and Brock, Warrigal and Perryfoot seemed dim remote figures from a faint shadowy past that had nothing to do with him now.

Suddenly he began to fall; down, down through a long narrow tunnel in the ground he tumbled, and as he fell the sides closed in over him, folding across his head as if the walls were made of soft mud that collapsed in. Once or twice as he fell he tried to catch on to the sides but when he did so and began to haul himself up they gave way and he felt himself sliding backwards again into the dark gaping vortex beneath. Further and further he dropped and around him all he could see was an inky swirling blackness which flashed in front of his eyes, and his mind whirled around so that he was unable to think or feel anything except an icy chill of fear. As he fell it seemed to get hotter so that now sweat was dripping off him and his whole body burned and tingled with a prickly fire that came from just under the skin. He felt himself shrinking as well and vaguely remembered that whereas when he began to fall he could almost touch the sides, now he could not even see them, so vast did the shaft seem.

Down and down he fell into the abyss, as if he would go on for ever, when he felt a sudden thump. He sat for a moment dazed and shocked, unable to control his thoughts and struggling to find something ordinary to tell him where he was. He looked down at the ground and saw a tuft of heather growing from amongst some stones. Gingerly he reached out and touched it to make sure it was real and his fingers closed around the soft feathery purple flowers. Slowly his mind stopped spinning and he looked up. He was still on the mountain where he remembered being before although it seemed a long time since he was there. And still all around was that thick damp mist, but now just ahead of him was the mouth of a huge cave at the base of a sheer rock cliff the top of which was lost in the mist. He looked inside the cave and saw, deep within, the familiar golden glow which once again started to draw him towards it. He got up and half-walked, half-stumbled across the few paces to the entrance, and then further in, deeper and deeper towards the light until it was just ahead of him. He stopped and stared at it, mesmerized by the little tongues of golden fire that leapt and danced against the cave wall. Then a voice came to him out of the light; a warm seductive voice, gentle and soothing, making him feel warm and safe. It called him by name and thanked him for all he had done; he had been chosen wisely it said, and he had justified all the faith and trust that had been placed in him. All manner of trials and hardships he had been through but now finally all that was over. This was the end; the journey was finished. Now he would always feel as he had felt when he strode like a giant over the mountains and the valleys; all-powerful and surging with strength. Look at the wall, the voice went on, and as Nab turned, the great high wall of the cave seemed to shiver with silver light until slowly it melted away and a picture took its place. So real was it that he felt a part of it; he could almost have walked in and touched what he saw. A great white coach was travelling slowly and steadily along a straight paved highway. Nab looked closely at the coach and saw that it was made of whalebone and ivory which shimmered in the silver light. On either side of the highway stood neatly clipped hedges and bushes and on the verge stood thousands of cheering Urkku, waving giant flags and shouting, ‘Hail, hail to the leader. Hail to the ruler.’ As far as the eye could see they stretched, and the coach moved through the middle of them with its two occupants staring straight ahead hardly noticing the crowds. Nab could only see them from the back and he watched as the coach carried them finally to a great palace with huge pillars and arches and a wide flight of steps leading up to a palisade on which courtiers and attendants waited in file. As the coach stopped and the couple alighted a band began to play and the music blended with the cheers to form a tumult of celebration. Up the steps they walked, and when they reached the top, two servants pulled open the mighty doors which opened into a massive hall. The floor was covered in rugs made from the skins of animals. Nab recognized some; sheepskin, deerskin, goat and badger but there were others he did not know from strange exotic animals who resided in the far north or west – reds and golds, blacks, oranges and whites, all mingled together to form a kaleidoscope of colour. Nab looked up to the walls. Arranged in rows on either side were the heads of numerous different animals, mounted on shields of wood. There hung the fox, the badger, the otter and deer and again a thousand others which he did not recognize, all with their mouths twisted in a half-snarl, half-sneer and their false eyes staring lifelessly at the scene below. Nab had still not seen the couple from the front but now he stared at their backs as they walked slowly over the rugs. They wore long cloaks of white fur which hung down to the floor and as they moved Nab could see their long leather boots trimmed with tufts of a different coloured fur. There was a familiar yet disturbing look about them as they made their way towards the two great thrones set on a raised dais at the end of the hall, and then, as they reached them and turned round, his heart stopped and his blood froze, for there, staring back at him from the picture was the exact double of himself. He looked fearfully at the other figure and saw that, as he had half-expected, it was Beth. On their heads they wore crowns of ivory and around their necks dangled necklaces of teeth and bone. Badger-hair bracelets adorned their wrists and two tortoiseshell combs held back the long flowing tresses of Beth’s golden hair. An awful doubt now began to nag at Nab’s befuddled mind. Was it really Ashgaroth who was showing him all this? He watched as the couple in the hall smiled at him and held up their arms as if beckoning. Then his double started to speak.