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movement like the shaking of the air over a bonfire or over a paved road baked by a summer sun. Yet there was no difference in heat to explain it here.
    There were no handles on the doors. Will stretched his arms forward, with the palm of each hand flat against the wood, and he pushed. As the doors swung open beneath his hands, he thought that he caught a phrase of the fleeting bell-like music again; but then it was gone, into the misty gap between memory and imagining. And he was through the doorway, and without a murmur of sound the two huge doors swung shut behind him, and the light and the day and the world changed so that he forgot utterly what they had been.
    He stood now in a great hall. There was no sunlight here. Indeed there were no real windows in the lofty stone walls, but only a series of thin slits. Between these, on both sides, hung a series of tapestries so strange and beautiful that they seemed to glow in the half-light.Will was dazzled by the brilliant animals and flowers and birds, woven or embroidered there in rich colours like sunlit stained glass.
    Images leapt at him; he saw a silver unicorn, a field of red roses, a glowing golden sun. Above his head the high vaulted beams of the roof arched up into shadow; other shadows masked the far end of the room. He moved dreamily a few paces forward, his feet making no sound on the sheepskin rugs that covered the stone floor, and he peered ahead. All at once sparks leapt and fire flared in the darkness, lighting up an enormous fireplace in the far wall, and he saw doors and high-backed chairs and a heavy carved table. On either side of the fireplace two figures stood waiting for him: an old lady leaning on a stick, and a tall man.
    â€œWelcome, Will,” the old lady said, in a voice that was soft and gentle, yet rang through the vaulted hall like a treble bell. She put out one thin hand towards him, and the firelight glinted on a huge ring that rose round as a marble above her finger. She was very small, fragile as a bird, and though she was upright and alert, Will, looking at her, had an impression of immense age.
    He could not see her face. He paused where he stood, and unconsciously his hand crept to his belt. Then the tall figure on the other side of the fireplace moved, bent, and lighted a long taper at the fire, and coming forward to the table, began putting the taper to a ring of tall candles there. Light from the smoking yellow flame played on his face. Will saw a strong, bony head, with deep-set eyes and an arched nose fierce as a hawk’s beak; a sweep of wiry white hair springing back from the high forehead; bristling brows and a jutting chin. And though he did not know why, as he stared at the fierce, secret lines of that face, the world he had inhabited since he was born seemed to whirl and break and come down again in a pattern that was not the same as before.
    Straightening, the tall man looked at him, across the circle of lighted candles that stood on the table in a frame like the rim of a flat-resting wheel. He smiled slightly, the grim mouth slanting up at its edges, and a sudden fan of lines wrinkling each side of the deep-set eyes. He blew out the burning taper with a quick breath.
    â€œCome in, Will Stanton,” he said, and the deep voice too seemed to leap in Will’s memory. “Come and learn. And bring that candle with you.”
    Puzzled, Will glanced around him. Close to his right hand, he found a black wrought-iron stand as tall as himself, rising to three points; two of the points were tipped by a five-pointed iron star and the third by a candlestick holding a thick white candle. He lifted out the candle, which was heavy enough to need both hands, and crossed the hall to the two figures waiting at the other end. Blinking through the light, he saw as he approached them that the circle of candles on the table was not a complete circle after all; one holder in the ring was empty. He leaned across the table, gripping the