Fellowship of the Talisman Read online

  The scuff of leaves moved steadily up the hill. Duncan shifted his weight, getting set for swift action if it should be needed.

  In a moment, he could see who it was and let the point of the blade drop to the ground. His breath came out of him with a gush of relief. He was surprised; he had not realized he had been holding his breath.

  He stood erect and waved the sword in greeting to Conrad. Conrad came forward with a rush, stopping in front of him.

  “Thank the good Lord,” he said. “You are all right.”

  “And you? How are you?”

  “Fine,” said Conrad. “Knocked around some, but all right. The hairless ones are gone. There is no one around. Had to be sure before I came back to you.”

  He put a hamlike hand on Duncan’s shoulder, shook him affectionately. “You sure you are all right? Seemed all but dead to me. Had to find a place to hide you safe.”

  “But for the love of God,” asked Duncan, “why a tomb? Why hide me in a tomb?”

  “Unusual place,” said Conrad. “No one would think to look.”

  “That’s right. Conrad, you did fine. Thank you so much.”

  “The old lord, he told me take care of you.”

  “I’m sure he did,” said Duncan. “And how are the others?”

  “Daniel and Tiny are well. They are standing guard behind me. Beauty ran away, but Daniel found her. Daniel has a bruise, high on the shoulder. We licked them, m’lord. We licked them good and proper.”

  “Diane? The woman?”

  “She flew away on the dragon.”

  “Not a dragon, Conrad. A griffin.”

  “Griffin, then. She flew away on him.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “Blood all over her, but I think it came from the hairless one she killed. The hermit ran away. There’s no hide nor hair of him.”

  “Rest easy about him,” said Duncan. “He’ll be back to get his cabbages.”

  “What will we do now?”

  “We regroup. We talk it over and decide.”

  “Harriers now know we are here. They’ll keep watch on us.”

  “Maybe it was silly for us to think we could slip through them,” said Duncan.

  Although at the time they had talked about it, back at Standish House, it had seemed quite possible. The area that had been desolated was large, and it had seemed unlikely that the Harriers could keep watch over all of it, or would even try to keep watch over all of it. Apparently, however, they had worked out some system to guard the approaches to the area. More than likely they used the hairless ones as pickets to keep watch for anyone who might show up.

  Which could have been why, back in the garden plot, they had faced only the hairless ones and not any of the others that made up the Horde.

  “We’ll go back to hermit’s cave to talk?” asked Conrad. “Maybe spend the night there?”

  “Yes, I think so. I expect the hermit will show up. There’s something I want to talk with him about.”

  Conrad half turned to go.

  “Wait,” said Duncan. “There is something I want to see about.”

  He led the way around the tomb and leaned down to stare into it.

  “I think someone threw a rock into it,” he said. “But maybe not. It may be something else.”

  It was something else. It glistened as no rock would glisten.

  He reached in and lifted it out.

  “A bauble,” Conrad said.

  “Yes,” said Duncan, “a bauble. And what is it doing here?”

  It was as big as a man’s fist and pear-shaped. It was covered by a lacy fretwork of gold, inset at the intersection of the fretwork lines with tiny, flashing jewels. Seen through the fretwork was a silvery object, egg-shaped and with a look of heft to it. From the small neck of the pear-shaped outer framework hung a heavy chain that also may have been gold, but was not quite so lustrous as the fretwork.

  Duncan handed the bauble to Conrad and once more leaned over the tomb to peer. From one corner a skull grinned out at him.

  “God rest you,” said Duncan to the skull. Together the two men went down the hill, heading for the cave.

  7

  I guess,” said Andrew, the hermit, “that I never got around to telling you that besides being a devout man, I’m an arrant coward. My heart cried out to help you, but my legs said for me to go. In the end they overruled my heart and took me out of there as fast as I could go.”

  “We made out without you,” said Conrad.

  “But I failed you. I only had my staff but with it I could have struck a stout blow or two.”

  “You’re not a fighting man,” said Duncan, “and we hold no blame of you for running. But there is another way that you can help us.”

  The hermit finished up his slice of ham and reached for a wedge of cheese.

  “In any way I can,” he said. “It would be my pleasure to be of aid to you.”

  “This bauble we found in Wulfert’s tomb,” said Duncan. “Can you tell us what it is? Could it be what the griffin woman was seeking?”

  “Ah, that woman,” cried Andrew. “You must believe me, please. I had no idea she was here. She hid from me. I am sure of that. She hid and watched me get my poor meals from the garden patch. There must have been some reason for her hiding.”

  “I am sure of that,” said Duncan. “We must try to find the reason.”

  “She hid in the church,” the hermit said. “What kind of place is that to hide? It’s sacrilege, that’s what it is. A church is not a place to live in. It was not built to live in. No proper person would even think of living in a church.”

  “It was the only place in the village,” said Duncan, “that had a roof to cover her. If she were going to stay here she’d have to have someplace to keep out of the weather.”

  “But why did she want to stay here?”

  “You heard her. She was seeking some news of Wulfert. She was searching the church records for some word of him. She knew that at one time he lived here. She might have thought that he left here to go elsewhere, and it may have been that kind of word that she was seeking. There is no way she could have known that he was buried here.”

  “I know all that,” the hermit said, “but why should she be seeking him?”

  Duncan dangled the bauble in front of him, and as he did so Andrew reared back in horror, putting as much distance between it and himself as he was able.

  “I think she was seeking this,” said Duncan. “Do you happen to know what it is? Were there any stories in the village about it?”

  “It was a relic,” said Andrew. “That’s what the villagers thought it was. That’s how the olden stories ran. A relic, but a relic of what or whom I don’t think I ever heard. Perhaps no one ever knew. The village thought Wulfert was a holy man. He never told them otherwise. He let them go on thinking he was a holy man. It might not have been safe for him if they’d known he was a wizard. Ah, the black shame of it….”

  “Yes, I know,” Duncan said unsympathetically. “He was buried in holy ground.”

  “Not only that,” cried Andrew, “but the people of the village built a tomb for him. For themselves they were content with crudely carven stones, but for him they spent many days in quarrying great slabs of the choicest stone and more days in dressing it and constructing a place for him to lie. And what is more, there was a great expenditure of wine.”

  “Wine? What did wine have to do with it?”

  “Why, to pickle him, of course. The old tales said he died at the height of summer and that it was necessary to keep him…”

  “That I understand. But they needn’t have used wine. Plain brine would have done as well or better.”

  “You may be right — better. There is one story that he got rather high before they could lay him in the tomb. But there were those who thought plain brine would be too vulgar.”

  “So they entombed this wizard with a great deal of work and appropriate ceremony in the belief that he was a holy man. And they buried h
is relic with him. Perhaps hung around his neck.”

  Andrew nodded in misery. “I guess, my lord, you have summed it up.

  “Don’t call me lord. I’m not a lord. My father is the lord.”

  “I am sorry, my lord. I shall not call you so again.”

  “How do you suspect that the stories of this Wulfert have lasted so long? A century at least, perhaps several centuries. You have no idea of how long ago this happened?”

  “None at all,” said Andrew. “There was a date marked on the little statuary that surmounted the tomb, but that was shattered when the tree fell. Although it is not to be wondered at that the stories survived. In a village like this months would go by with nothing, absolutely nothing, happening. So when something did happen, it made a great impression and was long remembered and much talked about. Besides, to have a holy man was a long leg up. It gave the village some mark of distinction no other nearby village had.”

  “Yes,” said Duncan, “that I can understand. And this relic?”

  Andrew shrank farther back against the cave wall.

  “No relic,” he said. “It is an infernal machine.”

  “It does nothing,” said Conrad. “It just hangs there.”

  “Probably it’s not activated,” said Duncan. “Not working. There may be a certain word to speak, a certain mechanism to be set.”

  “My advice,” said Andrew, “would be to bury it deep or fling it into running water. No good can come of it. We face enough danger and misery without asking for more. Why have you so much interest in it? You say you travel to Oxenford. I do not understand you. You say it is important you get to Oxenford and yet you become overly entranced by this disgraceful thing out of a wizard’s grave.”

  “We travel to Oxenford on the Lord’s business,” said Conrad.

  “Your lord’s business?”

  “No, the Great Lord’s business. Holy business.”

  “Conrad!” Duncan said, sharply.

  Andrew appealed to Duncan. “Is what he says correct? Is this the Lord’s business you are on? Holy business?”

  “I suppose one could say so. We do not talk about it.”

  “It must be important,” Andrew said. “The way is long and hard and cruel. Yet you have about you something that says the journey must be made.”

  “It will be harder now,” said Duncan. “We had hoped, with only a small party of us, we could slip through unnoticed. But now the Harriers know. We fell afoul of what must have been their picket line and now they’ll be watching us. There’ll be no step of the way we won’t be in their sight. The hairless ones probably will not be the only ones. The whole thing makes me nervous. If they have pickets out, there is something the Horde is trying to protect.

  Something that they want no one to stumble on.”

  “How will we go about it?” asked Conrad.

  “Straight ahead,” said Duncan. “It’s the only way to do it. We might try to travel farther east, but I fear we’d find the Harriers there as well. We’d be going a long way out of our way and perhaps not be any safer. We’ll go straight ahead, travel as swiftly as we can, and keep close watch.”

  Ghost had been suspended in one corner of the cave while they bad been talking, and now he floated forward.

  “I could scout for you,” he said. “I could go ahead and scout. The fear of it will shrivel up my soul, if indeed I still have a soul, but for the love of you who have agreed to let me go with you, for a holy purpose, I can do it.”

  “I didn’t ask you to accompany us,” said Duncan. “I said I saw no way we could stop you going.”

  “You do not accept me,” Ghost wailed. “You see me not as a thing that once had been a man. You do not…”

  “We see you as a ghost, whatever a ghost may be. Can you tell me, sir, what a ghost may be?”

  “I do not know,” said Ghost. “Even being one I cannot tell you. You ask me for one definition and now I’ll ask you for another. Can you tell me what a man may be?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “I can tell you,” said Ghost, “that it is a bitter thing to be a ghost. A ghost does not know what he is nor how he should act. This especially is true of a ghost that has no place to haunt.”

  “You could haunt the church,” suggested Andrew. “In life you were closely connected with the church.”

  “But never in it,” said Ghost. “Outside of it. Sitting on the steps, begging alms. And I tell you, Hermit, that it was not, all in all, as good a life as I had thought it might be. The people in the village were a stingy lot.”

  “They were poor,” said Andrew.

  “Miserly as well. Few of them so poor they could not spare a copper. There were days on end when there were no coppers, not a single one.”

  “So your lot is hard,” Andrew said unfeelingly. “All of our lots are hard.”

  “There is one recompense,” said Ghost. “Being a ghost is not as bad as being dead, especially if, being dead, one should go to Hell. There are many poor souls alive this very moment who know that once they die they will go straight to Hell.”

  “And you?”

  “Again I do not know. I was not a vicious man, only a lazy one.”

  “But things are looking up for you. You are going with these people to Oxenford. You may like Oxenford.”

  “They say there is no way in which they can stop me going, an attitude I take to be ungracious of them. But, anyhow, I’m going.”

  “So am I,” said Andrew. “If they will have me, that is. I have longed all my life to be a soldier of the Lord. That was what I thought I was doing when I took up hermiting. A holy zeal burned, perhaps not too brightly, in my breast, but at least it burned. I tried many things to prove my devotion. For years I sat staring at a candle flame, taking time only to find and consume food and take care of my bodily needs. I slept only when I could no longer stay awake. At times I nodded and singed my eyebrows on the candle’s flame. And it was expensive. I was at times hard put to keep in candles. And I got nowhere. The candle-watching never accomplished a thing for me. I didn’t even feel good about it. I stared at the candle flame, I told myself, so that I might become one of those who were one with the fall of the leaf, the song of bird, the subtle color of the sunset, the intricate web spun by a spider, in this wise becoming one with the universe — and none of this happened. A fall of a leaf meant nothing to me; I could not care less for birds or the songs they sang. I lacked something or the idea went all wrong or those who had claimed success before were only bald-faced liars. After a time I came to know that I was a fraud.

  “Now, however, I have a chance to be a real soldier of the Lord. Craven I may be, and with no more strength than a reed, but with my staff I trust that I can strike a lusty blow or two if need be. I’ll do my best not to run away, as I did today when danger threatened.”

  “You were not the only one today to run away,” Duncan said sourly. “The Lady Diane, battle axe and all, also ran away.”

  “But not until it all was over,” Conrad said.

  “I thought you told me…”

  “You misunderstood my words,” said Conrad. “When the battle started, she was dismounted, but she mounted again and she and the griffin fought. She with her axe, the griffin with his claws and beak. Only when the hairless ones broke and ran did she fly away.”

  “That makes me feel better,” Duncan said. “She had not seemed to be one who would run away. I was the only shirker, then.”

  “You caught an unlucky throw of a club,” said Conrad. “I stood over you to fight off those who came at you. Most of the damage done to the hairless ones was by my lady and the dragon.”

  “Griffin,” Duncan said.

  “That is right, m’lord. A griffin. I confuse the two.”

  Duncan stood up.

  “We should go to the church,” he said, “and see if we can find the lady. There still is daylight left.”

  “How is your head?” asked Conrad.

  “It has an outsize goose egg
on it, and it hurts. But I am all right.”

  8

  The church was not large, but it was a more impressive structure than would have been expected in such a village.

  Over the centuries pious villagers had labored to erect it, quarrying and dressing the stone, hoisting it into place, laying the heavy slabs that made up the floor, carving the pews and altar and all the other furniture out of native oak, weaving the tapestries to decorate its walls. There was about it, Duncan told himself, a rude simplicity that made for a charm too seldom found in other much larger and more elaborate buildings.

  The tapestries had been pulled down from the walls and lay on the flagstones, crumpled and trampled. Some of them had been set afire, but had failed to burn. The pews and other furniture had been smashed, the altar demolished.

  Diane and the griffin were not there, although there were signs that once they had been. Griffin dung spotted the stones of the floor; they found the chapel that the woman had used as a sleeping room — sheepskins upon the floor to make a bed, a small, rudely built cooking pit fashioned of stone, and half a dozen cooking utensils.

  In the second chapel stood a long table, miraculously still intact. Upon it were spread piles of parchment sheets.

  An inkpot and a quill pen, fixed to its stand, stood among the litter.

  Duncan picked up one of the parchments. It crinkled at his touch. The writing was crabbed, the words misspelled, bordering on the illiterate. Someone had been born, someone had died, a couple had been married, a mysterious murrain had killed a dozen sheep, the wolves had been bad that year, an early frost had shriveled the gardens, but snow had held off almost until Christmas.

  He picked up other sheets. They were all the same. The records of years of village nothingness. Births, deaths, marriages, minor local catastrophes. The gossip of old wives, the small fears, the small triumphs — an eclipse of the moon and the terror in its wake, the time of falling stars and the wonder of it, the early bloom of forest flowers, the violent summer thunderstorm, the feasts and their celebrations, the good crops and the bad — all the local historical trivia, the records of a village pastor so immersed in village happenings that he had no other interests.