Fellowship of the Talisman Read online

  Conrad, squatting before the fire, raked hot coals off to one side and cooked oaten cakes and rashers of bacon.

  Their camp was situated at the edge of a small grove, with the stream in front of them and a sandy stretch of ground running from the water to the grove.

  They ate as darkness was creeping over the land. A short time later Ghost came floating in.

  “So there you are,” said Andrew. “We had been wondering what had happened to you.”

  “Much afraid,” said Ghost, “still I travel very widely. In the open daylight, which is unpleasant for me, I spied out the land.”

  “How far have you gone?” asked Duncan.

  “To where the fen begins. I do not go beyond. Very spooky place.”

  “And you a spook,” said Conrad.

  “A ghost,” Ghost told him primly. “Not a spook. There is a difference.”

  “You saw nothing, of course,” said Conrad. “Tiny has been out all day as well.”

  “There are those you call the hairless ones,” said Ghost. “A very few of them. To the east, some miles to the east.

  Several small bands of them. Keeping pace with you. Traveling in the same direction.”

  “How came Tiny not to see them?”

  “I flit much faster than the hound,” said Ghost. “Over hill and dale. But frightened. Very frightened. It is not given a ghost should be out in open country. His proper sphere is within a structure, shielded from the sky.”

  “Maybe they don’t even know we are here,” said Andrew.

  Duncan shook his head. “I’m afraid they do. If not they’d be traveling this same easy route, instead of out there, clambering up and down the hills. It sounds to me as if we’re being herded, somewhat less obviously than Tiny herded in the witch. They know, because of the fen, that we cannot go west. They’re making sure we don’t make a break toward the east.”

  Meg, the witch, tugged at Duncan’s sleeve. “Sire,” she said, “those others.”

  “What is it, grandmother? What others?”

  “The ones other than the hairless ones. They are nearby. They squat in outer darkness. They are the ones who laugh gruesomely even as they proceed with your undoing.”

  “If anyone was here,” Conrad objected, “if anyone was near, Tiny would know of them and warn us.”

  Tiny lay beside the fire, his nose resting on his outstretched paws. He gave no sign that he knew of anything.

  “The dog might not know,” said Meg. “You are dealing here with something that is more subtle and with a greater capacity for evil and deception than the evil things you encounter in the ordinary run of events. They are…”

  “But the Reaver spoke of demons and of imps,” said Conrad. “He would know. He fought them.”

  “He used the only names he knew,” said Meg. “He had no names for these other ones, which are not seen as often as the demon or the imp. And there may, perchance, have been imp and demon, for the Horde would attract a large gathering of camp followers, all the evil of ordinary kind joining in with them as great gatherings of common people will follow a human army.”

  “But you did not join with them,” said Duncan. “And you said that you were evil. A little evil, you said. That you’d have to be a little evil to be a witch at all.”

  “Thus you find me out,” said Meg. “I only try to be evil. I would be evil if I could, for then my powers would be the greater. But I only try. At times I thought myself of greater evil than I was and I felt no fear when the Horde came sweeping in, for I said to myself most surely they will recognize me and leave me alone or teach me, perhaps, a greater evil. But this they did not do. They stole all my amulets and they burned my hut and they kicked me in the butt, a most uncourteous way in which to treat someone who is doing her poor best to be even as they are.”

  “And you feel no shame in this quest of evil? You feel it is appropriate that you make yourself an evil one?”

  “Only the better to practice my work,” said Meg without a trace of shame. “Once a person lays hands upon her life work, then it must make sense that she do the best she can, no matter where her proficiency may lead her.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you entirely,” Duncan said.

  “I knew you for no evil one,” said Conrad, “when first I laid eyes upon you. There was no evil in your eye. No more evil than one finds in a goblin or a gnome.”

  “There are those who believe,” said Andrew primly, “that a goblin and a gnome have some taint of evil in them.”

  “But they’re not,” insisted Conrad. “They are Little People, different from us, having little magics while we have almost no magic at all.”

  “I could get along quite comfortably,” said Andrew, “without their little magics. Using those small magics they’ve pestered me almost to the death.”

  Duncan said to Meg, “You say that there are members of this greater Evil about, even now, outside the camp? That the dog may not be able to detect them?”

  “I do not know about the dog,” said Meg. “He may detect them and be only slightly puzzled. Not enough to pay much attention to them, not knowing what they are. But Old Meg detects them, ever so faintly, and she knows what they are.”

  “You are sure about that?”

  “I am sure,” she said.

  “In that case,” said Duncan, “we cannot depend on Tiny alone to stand guard against them, as we might have otherwise. We’ll have to stand watch throughout the night. I’ll take the first watch, Conrad the second.”

  “You’re leaving me out,” said Andrew, somewhat wrathfully. “I claim my right to stand my share of the watch. I am, after all, a soldier of the Lord. I share the dangers with you.”

  “You get your rest,” said Duncan. “The day ahead will be a hard one.”

  “No harder than it will be for you and Conrad.”

  “You still will get your rest,” said Duncan. “We can’t hold up the march for you. And your mind must be clear and sharp to point out the way if there should be question.”

  “It is true,” said Andrew, “that I know the trail, for I’ve followed it many times when I was younger than I am now.

  But it presents no problems. Any fool could follow it.”

  “Nevertheless I insist you get your rest.”

  Andrew said no more, but sitting close beside the campfire, he did some mumbling.

  Andrew was the last of them to go to sleep. Conrad stretched out and pulled the blanket over him and almost immediately began to snore. Meg, curled up in a ball beside the saddle and the packs, slept like a baby, at times making little crying noises. Off to one side, Daniel lay down to sleep; Beauty slept standing on her feet, her head drooped, her nose almost touching the ground. Tiny dozed beside the fire, occasionally getting up to march stiff-legged about the camp’s perimeter, growling softly in his throat, but giving no indication that there was anything requiring his immediate attention.

  Duncan, sitting beside the fire, close beside Tiny, found no trouble in staying awake. He was tensed and on edge, and when he tried to smooth out the tenseness, it refused to go away. No wonder, he told himself, with all of Meg’s talk about the Evil being close. But if there was Evil about he could not detect it. If it were there, it rustled in no bushes, it made no noise of any kind. He listened intently for the footstep — or the paw-step or the hoof-step — and there was nothing there at all.

  The land drowsed in the liquid moonlight. There was no breeze, and the leaves were silent, unstirring. The only sound was the soft gurgle of the water flowing over a short stretch of shingle between two pools. Once or twice he heard the hooting of owls far in the distance.

  He pressed his fingers against the pouch hanging at his belt and heard the faint crinkling of the parchment. For this, he thought, for so frail a thing as these few sheets of parchment, he and the others (the others, with the exception of Conrad, not knowing) were marching deep into the Desolated Land, where only God might know what would be waiting for them. A frail thing and
a magic thing as well? Magic in that if it should prove to be genuine, then the Church would be strengthened, and more would find belief, and the world, in time to come, would be a better place.

  The Evil Horde had its evil magic, the Little People their small magics, but these leaves of parchment, in the last accounting, might be the greatest magic of them all. Without actually forming words, he bowed his head and prayed it might be so.

  And, finally, as he prayed, he heard a sound and for a long moment could not be sure what it was. It was so distant, so muffled, that at first he was not sure he heard it, but as he listened intently, it became more distinct, and he could make it out. The sound of distant hoofbeats, the undeniable hoofbeats of a horse, and now another sound, the far-off baying of dogs.

  Although never loud, the sounds were distinct and clear. There could be no doubt of it: the wild hoofbeats of a running horse and the baying of hounds, and occasionally (although he could not be sure of this) the shouting of a man or men.

  The strange thing about it was that the sound seemed to be coming from the sky. He looked up at the starwashed, moon-drenched sky, and there was nothing there. And yet the sound seemed to come from there.

  It lasted only for a few minutes, and then it went away, and the silence of the night closed in.

  Duncan, who had risen to make his survey of the sky, sat down again. Beside him, Tiny was growling softly, his muzzle pointed upward. Duncan patted him on the head. “You heard it, too,” he said. Tiny ceased his growling and settled down.

  Later on, Duncan rose to his feet and walked down to the stream, carrying a cup to get a drink of water. As he knelt beside the stream, a fish jumped in the pool above him, shattering the stillness. A trout, he wondered. The stream might carry trout. If they had time in the morning, they might try to catch a few of them for breakfast. If they had time; that was, if it didn’t take too long. For there was no time to waste. The more quickly they were on their way, the faster they got through the Desolated Land, the better it would be.

  When the moon had dropped appreciably toward the west, he awakened Conrad, who came to his feet, alert, with no sign of sleep left in him.

  “Is everything all right, m’lord?”

  “Everything is fine,” said Duncan. “There has been nothing stirring.”

  He said nothing about the hoofbeats and the baying in the sky. As he formed the words in his mind to tell Conrad, they sounded too silly for the telling, and he did not say them.

  “Call me a little early,” he said. “I’ll try to catch some trout for breakfast.”

  Duncan rolled up his cloak and used it as a pillow. Stretching out on the hard ground, he pulled the blanket over him. Lying on his back, he stared up at the sky. He pressed his fingers against the soft deerskin pouch and heard the soft crinkling of the manuscript. He pressed his eyes tight shut, trying in this manner to put himself to sleep, but behind the closed eyes he conjured up in his mind, without intending to, quite unwillingly in fact, a scene that he could not understand. But then the realization of what his mind’s eye, in all the activity of his imagination, was showing him came clear. Impatiently he tried to shake it off, but it would not go away. No matter how hard he tried to shake it off, that figment of imagination hung on stubbornly. He turned over on his side and opened his eyes, seeing the campfire, Tiny lying beside it, Conrad looming over him.

  Duncan closed his eyes, determined that this time he would go to sleep. But his mind’s vision fastened on a furtive little man who scurried busily about to see and hear all that might be heard or seen among a small band of men who were associated with a tall and saintly figure. These men, all of them, the saintly man as well as his followers, were young, although too somber for their years, too dedicated, with a strange light in their eyes. They were of the people, certainly, for they were clothed in tattered garments, and while some of them wore sandals, others had nothing on their feet. At times the band was alone, at other times there were crowds of people who had gathered to gaze upon the saintly man, straining their ears to hear what he might say.

  And always, hovering on the edge of these crowds of people, or dogging the footsteps of the little band when it was alone, was this furtive figure who darted all about, never of the band, but with it, listening so hard that his ears seemed to swivel forward to catch the slightest words, his bright, sharp, almost weasel eyes squinted against the desert sunlight, but watching closely, missing no move that might be made.

  And later, crouching against a sheltering boulder or hunkering by a small campfire in the dead of night, writing all he’d seen or heard. Writing small so that his parchment would not run out, using every scrap of whiteness to inscribe his labored words, twisting his face and pursing his tiny mouth in the effort to get down the words exactly as they should be, telling in those words all that he had witnessed.

  Duncan tried without success to gain a full view of this furtive man, to look him in the face, so that he might judge what sort of man he was. But he was never able to. The face was always in a shadow or was turned away at that very moment when, finally, he thought he’d see the face. He was a short man, almost a dumpy figure. His feet were bare and there were bruises on them from the desert rocks and pebbles; he was dressed in dusty rags, so tattered that he was continually pulling at them in an effort to cover his scrawny nakedness. His hair was long and unkempt, his straggly beard untrimmed. He was not the sort of man upon whom a casual observer would have wasted a second glance. He was a nonentity. He faded into the crowd. He was an unrecognizable and unimportant human among many other humans, a man so undistinguished that he drew no attention. There was nothing about him that made him stand out among all the others; he was engulfed and absorbed by them.

  Duncan followed him, trudging steadily and doggedly to keep pace with his furtiveness, attempting to circle him so that he might come head-on at him and so get to see his face. Always he failed to do so. It was almost as if this furtive man was aware of him and was studiously careful either to keep well away from him or, on his approach, to turn away from him. Yet watching for some sign that this other furtive one was aware of him, he could catch no sign he was.

  Then someone was shaking him and hissing him to silence. He fought his eyes open and sat up. Conrad was crouched in front of him. His half-clenched hand was raised to the level of Duncan’s face, and an emphatic outstretched thumb was pointing across the dying campfire toward the ring of darkness that lay beyond the circle of the campfire’s light. There, at the edge of the circle, between the light and dark stood Tiny in a rigid stance, straining forward as if someone held him on a leash, lips curled back to bare his fangs, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

  Out of the darkness gleamed two wide-spaced balls of green fire and below them a frog-mouth rimmed by gleaming teeth, and over all of it — the teeth and balls of fire — the impression of a head or face so outrageous in its formation, so chilling in its outline that the mind rejected it, refusing to give credence to there being such a thing. The mouth was froglike, but the face was not. It was all angles and sharp planes and above it rose the suggestion of a crest. And in the instant that Duncan saw it, there was slaver at the corner of the mouth, a drooling hunger that yearned toward the campfire circle but was held from coming out — perhaps by the snarling Tiny, perhaps by something else.

  He saw it only for a moment, and then it was blotted out. The balls of fire were gone and so were the sharp and gleaming teeth. For an instant the outline of the face, or the hinted outline of the face, persisted; then it, too, blinked out.

  Tiny took a quick step forward, the growl rising in his throat.

  “No, Tiny,” Conrad said softly. “No.”

  Duncan surged to his feet.

  “They’ve been around the last hour or so,” said Conrad. “Prowling in the dark. But this is the first we’ve seen.”

  “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  “No need, m’lord. Tiny and me were watching. They were looking us over only.”r />
  “Many of them? More than this one?”

  “More than one, I think. Not many.”

  Duncan put more wood on the fire. Tiny was pacing around the campfire circle.

  Conrad spoke to the dog. “Come in. Tame down. No more of them tonight.”

  “How do you know there’ll be no more tonight?” asked Duncan. “They just looked us over. But now they’ve decided not to tackle us tonight. Maybe later on.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Don’t know. Just guess is all. A feeling in the bones.”

  “They have something planned for us,” said Duncan.

  “Maybe,” Conrad said.

  “Conrad, do you want to turn back?”

  Conrad grinned viciously. “Just when it’s getting good?” he asked. “I mean it,” Duncan told him. “There is danger here. I do not want to lead all of us to death.”

  “And you, m’lord?”

  “I’d go on, of course. Perhaps alone, I could make it. But I don’t insist that the rest of you…”

  “The old lord, he said take care of you. He’d skin me alive should I come back without you.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Duncan. “It has been that way since the time that we were boys.”

  “The hermit,” Conrad said. “Maybe the hermit would go back. He’s been bitching ever since we started.”

  “The hermit,” Duncan told him, “is a self-proclaimed soldier of the Lord. He needs this to restore his self-respect.

  He feels he was a failure as a hermit. Scared witless, he’d still not turn back unless the others of us did.”

  “Then we go on,” said Conrad. “Three comrades-in-the-arms. But what about the witch?”

  “She can make her choice. She hasn’t much to lose, one way or another. She had nothing when we found her.”

  So, no matter what Ghost may have told them, Duncan thought, it was not only the hairless ones who were watching and keeping track of them. Meg had been right. The others were about, had been there all night, perhaps, watching from the darkness. Even when he’d sat beside the campfire during that first watch, they had been out there without his knowing it. And what was more, without Tiny’s knowing it. Only the witch had known it. And strange as it might seem, she had not been greatly perturbed by it. Despite knowing they were there, she had curled up beside the saddle and the packs and had slept like a baby, making those little crying noises that had made her seem more babylike.