by Alan Garner
“Yes! Take them!”
He cried his pain, and snatching the cup from Helen, he threw it and the railing at the windows. Nicholas and David threw their Treasures. They struck together, and the windows blazed outward, and for an instant the glories of stone, sword, spear and cauldron hung in their true shapes, almost a trick of the splintering glass, the golden light.
The song faded.
The children were alone with the broken windows of a slum.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIDOR
Alan Garner was born in Cheshire on the 17th October 1934, and his childhood was spent in Alderley Edge, where his family has lived for more than four hundred years. His attendance at the local primary school was interrupted by several serious illnesses, from three of which he nearly died.
At the age of eleven he went to Manchester Grammar School and became the fastest schoolboy sprinter in Britain.
Before going to Oxford, he spent two years’ National Service as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. Realising then that his original ambition to become Professor of Greek was no longer valid, he decided to become a writer. He found his present mediaeval home, dug himself in, and wrote.
He has won many awards, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the Phoenix Award of America and the Karl Edward Wagner Special Award from the British Fantasy Society.
In 2001, Alan was awarded the OBE for services to literature, and in 2007 he was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in recognition for his achievements in advancing the archaeological understanding of Cheshire.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
The Moon of Gomrath
The Owl Service
Red Shift
A Bag of Moonshine
The Stone Book Quartet
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1965
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2008
www.harpercollinschildrensbooks.co.uk
Text copyright © Alan Garner 1965
Why You’ll Love This Book copyright © Jonathan Stroud 2008
Illustrations copyright © Charles Keeping 1965
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Source ISBN 9780007274789
Ebook edition © JULY 2013 ISBN 9780007388769
Version 2013-08-05
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