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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 begi
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 tu
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 spi