The King halted, and the crowd with him. Someone said, “Here, boy,” and I looked round to see the greybeard holding out a staff. I shook my head, then turned my back on them and walked forward alone.

Water stood everywhere, glinting in soggy pools between the tussocks, or on the curled fingers of young bracken thrusting through the pallid grass of winter. The grey rock glittered with it. As I walked slowly forward I had to narrow my eyes against the wet dazzle to see at all.

It was the western wall that had fallen. This had been built very near the edge of the crag, and though most of the collapse had been inwards, there was a pile of fallen stuff lying right out to the cliff’s edge, where a new landslip showed raw and slimy with clay. There was a space in the north wall where an entrance was to be built; I picked my way through this between the piles of rubble and workmen’s gear, and into the centre of the tower.

Here the floor was a thick mess of churned mud, with standing puddles struck to blinding copper by the sun. This was setting now, in the last blaze of light before dusk, and glared full in my eyes as I examined the collapsed wall, the cracks, the angle of fall, the tell-tale lie of the outcrops.

All the time I was conscious of the stir and mutter of the crowd. From time to time the sun flashed on bared weapons. Maugan’s voice, high and harsh, battered at the King’s silence. Soon, if I did nothing and said nothing, the crowd would listen to him.

From where he sat his mule the King could see me through the gap of the north entrance, but most of the crowd could not. I climbed—or rather, mounted, such was my dignity—the fallen blocks of the west wall, till I stood clear of the building that remained, and they could all see me. This was not only to impress the King. I had to see, from this vantage point, the wooded slopes below through which we had just climbed, trying, now that I was clear of the crowd and the jostling, to recognise the way I had taken up to the adit, all those years ago.

The voices of the crowd, growing impatient, broke in on me, and I slowly lifted both arms towards the sun in a kind of ritual gesture, such as I had seen the priests use in summoning spirits. If I at least made some show as a magician it might keep them at bay, the priests in doubt and the King in hope, till I had had time to remember. I could not afford to cast falteringly through the wood like a questing dog: I had to lead them straight and fast, as the merlin had once led me.