The Fellowship of the Talisman

  Yet, he told himself, he could not turn back. He carried with him a certain talisman that might keep the lights still burning, beating back the ancient darkness. And if he did not turn back, neither would Conrad, neither would the hermit.

  Dawn was near at hand. The darkness was filtering from the trees and one now was able to see a ways into the woods. A flight of ducks went over the camp’, crying as they flew, perhaps heading for a favorite feeding ground.

  “Conrad,” he asked, “do you see anything strange?”

  “Strange?”

  “Yes, the way this place looks. It seems to be all wrong. Not the way it was when we camped last night.”

  “Just the light,” said Conrad. “Things look different in the dawn.”

  But it was more than the dawn light, Duncan told himself. He tried to place the wrongness and was unable to. There was nothing definite that he could put a finger on. And yet it was different. The woods were wrong. The stream was wrong. The sense of things was wrong. As if someone had taken the geography in hand and had given it a slightly different twist, not changing it too much, but enough to be noticed, enough to give a viewer the feeling that it was skewed out of shape.

  Andrew sat up, levering himself upright with his elbows.

  “What is wrong?” he asked.

  “There is nothing wrong,” growled Conrad.

  “But there is. I know it. It is in the air.”

  “We had a visitor last night,” said Duncan. “Peeking from the bushes.”

  “More than one,” said Conrad. “Only one peeked out.”

  Andrew came swiftly to his feet, snatching up his staff.

  “Then the witch was right,” he said.

  “Of course she was,” said Meg, from where she was huddled by the saddle and the packs. “Old Meg is always right. I told you they were skulking about. I said they were watching us.”

  Daniel lunged to his feet, took a few quick steps toward the campfire, then paused. He blew fiercely through his nostrils and pawed with one hoof at the ground.

  “Daniel knows as well,” said Conrad.

  “All of us know,” said Andrew. “What do we do about it?”

  “We go on,” said Conrad. “That is, if you want to.”

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t want to?”

  “I thought you would,” said Conrad.

  Meg threw back her blanket, got to her feet, shook her rags into some semblance of shape about her.

  “They are gone now,” she said. “I can’t feel them any more. But they have enchanted us. We are in a trap. There is a certain stench to it.”

  “I see no trap,” said Conrad.

  “Not us,” said Andrew. “We are not the ones enchanted. It is the place that is enchanted.”

  “How do you know?” asked Duncan.

  “Why, the strangeness of it. Look over there, just above the stream. There is a rainbow shiver in the air.”

  Duncan looked. He could see no rainbow shiver in the air.

  “The Little People sometimes try to do it,” Andrew said, “but they do it very badly. As they do most things very badly. They are fumblers.”

  “And the Harriers are not?”

  “Not the Harriers,” said Meg. “They have the power. They do a job of it.”

  It was all insane, thought Duncan, to stand here so calmly, saying there was an enchantment on this place. And yet, perhaps there was. He had noticed the strange way in which the geography seemed to have been skewed about, slightly out of focus. He had not seen Andrew’s rainbow, but he had noticed how the place was slightly out of joint. Looking at it, he saw that it still was out of joint.

  “Perhaps we should get started,” Duncan said. “We can have breakfast later. If we move immediately, we may get out of this strangeness that you call enchantment. Surely it cannot cover a great expanse of ground.”

  “It will get worse farther on,” said Andrew. “I am sure that a deeper enchantment lies ahead of us. If we should go back we might soon be out of it.”

  “Back is where they want us to go,” said Conrad. “Otherwise why enchantment? And we are not going back. M’lord has decided we go on.”

  He reached for the saddle and threw it on the back of the waiting Daniel.

  “Come on,” he said to Beauty. “’Tis time to get you packed.”

  Beauty flapped her ears and trotted forward so he could put on the packs.

  “No one needs to go,” said Duncan. “Conrad and I have decided that we will. But the others of you need not.”

  “You heard me say that I would go,” said Andrew.

  Duncan nodded. “Yes, I did. I was sure you would.”

  “And I as well,” said Meg. “Faith and there’s little in this howling wilderness for an old girl such as I. And I have seen worse enchantments.”

  “We do not know what may lie ahead,” warned Duncan.

  “At least with you, there’s food,” she said, “which looms large in the eyes of a poor old soul who betimes has been forced to eke out her existence by eating nuts and roots, much as a hog would eat, rooting in the woods to find his dinner. And there’s companionship, of which I had none before.”

  “We have no time to waste,” said Conrad grimly. He grasped Meg around the waist and heaved her into the saddle.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  Daniel pranced a little, in a way of welcome to his rider.

  Conrad spoke again. “Tiny, point,” he said.

  The dog trotted down the trail, Conrad close behind him. Beauty took up her place, with Andrew trudging along beside her, thumping the ground with an energetic staff. Daniel and Duncan brought up the rear.

  The enchantment deepened. The land became wilder than it had been before. Monstrous oaks grew in massive groves, the underbrush was denser, and about it all there was an unreality that made one wonder if the oaks and underbrush were really there, if the boulders had as thick a coat of lichens and the sense of antiquity that they seemed to have. But that was only a part of it. A brooding grimness held over everything. A deep hush pervaded the land, a hush of ominous and forboding waiting, sinister and doomful.

  If the oaks had only been monstrous oaks, if the underbrush had been no more than thick, if the boulders had been only ancient mounds of lichens, a man, Duncan thought, could have accepted it. But there was the warping of these ordinary things, the crookedness and bias of them, as if they were not permanently planted in the earth, but were only there for the moment, as if someone had projected a picture of them and was as yet undecided what kind of picture he might want. It was a picture that wavered, as the reflection in a water surface might fluctuate with the almost imperceptible movement of the water, an oscillation, a shifting, a puzzling impermanence. And here and there one glimpsed at times the broken segments of shivering rainbow colors that Andrew had mentioned earlier, but that Duncan had not seen when he had looked for them. But now he did see them—the sort of shimmering color one saw when light shone through thick glass and its rays were scattered into a million hues. They appeared and disappeared, they did not last for long and never were they a complete rainbow arc, but fragments of arcs, shattered arcs, as if someone had taken a perfect rainbow and crushed it in his hands, shattering it, then broadcasting the fragments to the wind.

  The valley still remained, and the hills that rose on each side of it. But the faint trail they had been following had disappeared, and now they made their way through the tangled forest as best they could. Conrad was holding Tiny close ahead of him, not allowing the dog the wide range that he had permitted before. Daniel was nervous, tossing his head and snorting every now and then.

  “It’s all right, boy,” said Duncan, and Daniel answered with a quiet whicker.

  Ahead of Duncan, Andrew stumped along beside Beauty, thumping his staff with unaccustomed force. Beauty minced beside him, staying close. Unaccountably, she seemed to have taken a fancy to this strange companion. Perhaps she believed, thought Duncan, chuckling at the thought, that no
w she had acquired a human of her own, as Tiny had Conrad and Daniel had Duncan.

  At the head of the column, Conrad and Tiny had stopped. The others came up to cluster with them.

  “A swamp ahead,” said Conrad. “It blocks our way. Could this be the fen?”

  “Not the fen,” said Andrew. “The fen does not block the way. It lies to one side and is open water.”

  Through the trees the swamp could be seen, a spreading marshiness that was not open land, but choked by trees and other heavy growth.

  “Perhaps it’s not deep,” said Duncan. “We may be able to make our way through it, keeping close to the hill.”

  He moved ahead, Conrad striding beside him, the others trailing in their wake.

  Duncan and Conrad stopped at the edge of the water.

  “Looks deep to me,” said Conrad. “Some deep pools out there. More than likely mud. And the hill you speak of. There isn’t any hill.”

  What he said was correct. The line of hills they had been following now fell away and to their left, as well as toward their right, lay the tangled swamp.

  “Stay here,” said Duncan.

  He stepped into the water. At each step the water deepened, and beneath his feet he felt the squishiness of mud and slime. Before him lay the beginning of one of the pools that Conrad had called his attention to—black as the blackest ink, with a look of oil, of something heavier and more treacherous than water.

  He shifted his course to skirt it, and as he did the inky blackness of the water boiled, lashed to fury by something that struggled to emerge from it. A sinuous back humped up and broke through the blackness of the pool. Duncan’s hand went to the sword hilt, half drew the blade. The sinuous back subsided and the water once more assumed its undisturbed oiliness. But in another pool a little farther on, the surface exploded in a froth of violence, and out of it shot a vicious head supported by a snakelike body that hurled itself erect, towering above the level of the pool. The head was triangular, not so large as might be expected from the size of the ropelike body. Two horns crowned the scaly head; the cheeks had the appearance of armor plate, pinching down to a beaklike snout. It opened its mouth, and the mouth was larger than the head. Cruel curved fangs projected from the jaws.

  Duncan had the blade out by now and stood, holding it, ready for attack, but the attack did not come. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the body slid back into the pool and the head disappeared beneath the surface. The swamp lay quiet and black and menacing.

  “I think you’d best come back,” said Conrad.

  Slowly, step by careful step, Duncan backed out of the swamp.

  “No chance to get across,” said Conrad.

  Andrew came clumping down to where they stood, Beauty mincing along behind him.

  “There is no swamp,” he said. “There never was a swamp. It is all enchantment.”

  “Swamp or not,” said Meg, huddled on top of Daniel, “a bewitchment such as this can kill you.”

  “Then what do we do?” asked Duncan.

  “We try another route,” said Andrew. “We pass the enchantment by. No matter how powerful may be the ones who laid this witchery on us, they cannot lay it over everything. They knew where we were going and it was along that route that the enchantment was laid.”

  “You mean into the hills,” said Duncan. “If we go there, how well do you know this land?”

  “Not as well as this valley, but I know it. A few miles from here, due east, there is another trail. A bad trail. Very crooked, up and down the hills. Hard going. But it will take us south. It will take us beyond these hills that block us from the south.”

  “I think,” said Meg, “we best had seek that trail.”

  12

  They found Andrew’s trail, but it proved to be the wrong trail. Halfway up a steep hillside it petered out to nothing.

  They had left the enchantment far behind them, had escaped from it. Now there were no rainbow tints, no feeling that the landscape had been skewed. The land was the kind of land one would have expected to find. The oaks were honest oaks, the honest boulders had honest lichens on them, the stretches of underbrush were normal underbrush. The feeling of gloom was gone, the foreboding had dropped away.

  It had been hard work. There had been no level ground. Constantly they had been traveling steep slopes, or making their careful way down steep slopes, which in some cases was almost as exhausting as the climbing.

  Now that the trail had finally disappeared, Duncan glanced up at the sky. The sun was almost at its zenith.

  “Let us stop to eat and rest,” he said. “Then we’ll strike east and try to find the right trail.” He said to Andrew, “You are sure that there is one.”

  Andrew nodded. “I’ve traveled it, but only a few times and that many years ago. I am not well acquainted with it.”

  The trail had been lost on a small shelf of fairly level ground, extending for not more than a few yards before the steep slope took up again. Conrad gathered wood and started a fire. Daniel and Beauty stood with hanging heads, resting from hard travel. Tiny flopped down on the ground.

  “We could use Ghost,” said Conrad, “but he is far away, spying out the land ahead of us.”

  “I’ll say this for Ghost,” said Andrew. “I have a lot more respect for him than I had before. It takes real courage for a ghost to go out in broad daylight and do the kind of job that he’s been doing.”

  A gray shadow moved among the trees below them.

  “There’s a wolf,” said Duncan.

  “There are a lot of wolves around,” said Andrew. “More than there ever were since the Harriers came.”

  Another gray shadow followed the first, and farther down the slope was yet another one.

  “At least three of them,” said Duncan. “And there may be more. Do you think they might be following us?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Conrad. “A wolf is a coward. Face up to one and he runs away.”

  Meg put her arms around herself, hugging herself, shivering a little. “They smell blood,” she said. “They can smell blood before there is any blood.”

  “Old wives’ tale,” said Conrad.

  “Not a tale,” Meg said. “I know. They know when death is coming.”

  “Not our blood,” said Conrad. “Not our death.”

  A wind had come up and far down the hill it could be heard moaning in the trees. The ground was thick with fallen leaves. And over all of it was a somberness, the sense of autumn, a psychic warning against the coming of the snow. Duncan felt a faint unease, although there was nothing, he told himself, to be uneasy about. In just a short time now they would find the right trail and be on their way again, following a harder road than they had first intended, but on their way at last.

  How many more days, he wondered, and was amazed that he had no idea. Once they were through these hills, more than likely, they would make faster time. So far they had not hurried, but gone along at an easy pace. Now was the time, once they were squared around, he told himself, to really cover ground.

  “If Snoopy were only here,” said Andrew, “he would know the way, how to find the trail. But that is wishful thinking. There is no honor in him. Even when he told us, when he gave his word, he had no intention of being any help to us.”

  “We’ll make out without him,” Duncan said, a sharpness to his words.

  “At least,” said Conrad, “we walked out of the witchery that was laid for us.”

  “The witchery, yes,” said Andrew. “But there will be other things.”

  They ate and then moved on, striking toward the east, or as close to east as was possible, for in this tangled, tortuous land there was no such thing as heading in any one direction. There were diversions—a bad lay of ground, a particularly steep climb that they tried to skirt, a tangle of fallen trees they must go around. But, in general, they trended toward the east.

  The sun went down the sky and there was still no sign of any trail. They moved through a region that had no trac
e of men, or of there ever having been any men. There were no burned farmsteads, no cuttings where timber had been harvested. Ancient trees stood undisturbed, hoary with age.

  From time to time they caught glimpses of wolves, but always at a distance. There was no way of knowing if they were the same wolves they had seen earlier.

  We are lost, Duncan told himself, although he said nothing to the others. Despite all that Andrew said, all that he professed to know, there might not be a trail. For days they might keep plunging into the great wilderness and find nothing that would help them, floundering in confusion. Perhaps, he thought, it might be the enchantment still at work, although in a less obvious manner than had been the case before.

  The sun was almost gone when they came down a long slope into a deep glen, rimmed by the hills, as if it might be sunk into the very earth, a place of quiet and shadows, filled with a sense of melancholy. It was a place where one walked softly and did not raise his voice. The light of the sun still caught the hilltops above them and gilded some of the autumn trees with flaming color, but here night was falling fast.

  Duncan hurried ahead to catch up with Conrad.

  “This place,” said Conrad, “has an evil smell to it.”

  “Evil or not,” said Duncan, “it is a place to camp. Sheltered from the wind. Probably we’ll find water. There must be a stream somewhere. Better than being caught on some windy hillside.”

  “I thought to catch sight of something ahead,” said Conrad. “A whiteness. Like a church, perhaps.”

  “An odd place for a church,” said Duncan.

  “I could not be sure. In this dark, it is hard to see.”

  As they talked they kept moving ahead. Tiny had fallen back to walk with the two of them.

  Ahead of them Duncan caught a glimpse of whiteness.

  “I think I see it, too,” he said. “Straight ahead of us.”

  As they progressed a little farther they could see that it was a building—for all the world like a tiny church. A thin tall spire pointed toward the sky and the door stood open. In front of it a space had been cleared of underbrush and trees, and they went across this space filled with wonder. For there should not be a church here, even a small one. Round about lived no one who would attend it, and yet there it stood, a small building, like a toy church. A chapel, Duncan thought. One of those hidden chapels tucked away, for one obscure reason or another, in places that were off the beaten track.