The Fellowship of the Talisman

  “Well,” he said, “there is this manuscript. The story is a long one, but I’ll try to tell it quickly.”

  He told her quickly, condensing it, using as few words as he could.

  “This doctor in Oxenford,” she said. “The one man in all the world who can authenticate the manuscript. Have you got his name?”

  “His name is Wise. Bishop Wise. An old man and not too well. That’s why we are in such a hurry. He is old and ill; he may not have too long. His Grace said his sands were running out.”

  “Duncan,” she said in a small voice. “Duncan …”

  “Yes? You know the name?”

  She nodded. “He was Cuthbert’s old friend, his good friend.”

  “Why, that is fine,” he said.

  “No, Duncan, it is not. Bishop Wise is dead.”

  “Dead!”

  “Some weeeks ago Cuthbert got the word,” she told him. “Word his old friend had died. More than likely before you set out from Standish House.”

  “Oh, my God!” he said, going down on his knees beside her.

  A pointless trip, he thought. All of this for nothing. The man who could have authenticated the manuscript dead before they even had set out. Now the manuscript would not be authenticated. Not now. Perhaps never. A hundred years from now there might be another man, or there might never be another man such as Bishop Wise. His Grace would have to wait, Holy Church would have to wait, the Christian world would have to wait for that other man, if there should ever be one.

  “Diane,” he said, choking. “Diane!”

  She reached out and pulled his head into her lap, held him there, as a mother might a child.

  “Go ahead and weep,” she said. “I’m the only one to see. Tears will do you good.”

  He did not weep. He could not weep. Rather, bitterness swept in and gripped him, twisting him, rankling his soul. Until now, until this very moment, he realized, he had not known or had not let himself know how much the manuscript had meant to him—not as an abstract thing holding potential good for all the world, but to him personally. To him, Duncan Standish, as a Christian soul, as one who believed, however marginally, that a man named Jesus once had walked the Earth, had said the words He was reported to have said, had performed His miracles, had laughed at wedding feasts, had drunk wine with His brothers, and finally had died upon a Roman cross.

  “Duncan,” Diane said softly. “Duncan, I mourn as well as you.”

  He lifted his head and looked at her.

  “The talisman,” he said.

  “We will use the talisman as Wulfert meant it should be used.”

  “It’s all that’s left,” he said. “At least some good may come out of this journey.”

  “You have no doubts of the talisman?”

  “Yes, there may be doubts. But what more is there to do?”

  “Nothing more,” she said.

  “We may die,” he said. “The talisman may not be enough.”

  “I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll be there beside you.”

  “To die with me?”

  “If that is how it happens. I don’t think it will. Wulfert …”

  “You have faith in him?”

  “As much faith as you have in your manuscript.”

  “And after it is over?”

  “What do you mean? Once it is over?”

  “I’ll go back to Standish House. And you?”

  “I’ll find a place. There are other wizard castles. I’ll be welcome.”

  “Come home with me.”

  “As your ward? As your mistress?”

  “As my wife.”

  “Duncan, dearest, I have wizard blood.”

  “And in my veins runs the blood of unscrupulous adventurers, martial monsters, reavers, pirates, the ravishers of cities. Go far enough back and God knows what you’d find.”

  “But your father. Your father is a lord.”

  For a moment Duncan envisioned his father, standing tall-tree straight, whiffling out his mustache, his eyes gray as granite and yet with a warmth within them.

  “A lord,” he said, “and yet a gentleman. He’ll love you as a daughter. He never had a daughter. He has no one but me. My mother died years ago. Standish House has waited long for a woman’s hand.”

  “I’ll need to think,” she said. “One thing I can tell you. I love you very much.”

  31

  The swarm rested on top of a small ridge, back from the edge of the fen. It was a terrifying sight—black and yet not entirely black, for through it ran strange flickerings, like the distant flaring of heat lightning such as one would see far off, coloring the horizon, on a summer night. At times the swarm seemed to be substantial, a solid ball of black; at other times it appeared curiously flimsy, like a loose ball of yarn, like a soap bubble very close to bursting. It seemed, even when it appeared to be most solid, to be in continual motion, as if the creatures or the things or whatever it might be that made it up, were continually striving to place themselves in more advantageous positions, rearranging themselves, shuffling about to attain a more ideal configuration. Watching it, one at times could see, or imagine he saw, a shape, an individual member of the swarm, although never for long enough to be entirely sure what it might be. And that, thought Duncan, was perhaps as well, for the glimpses that he got were of shapes and structures so horrifying, so far beyond anyone’s most outrageous imaginings, that they made the blood run cold.

  He spoke to those who clustered about him. “All of you know what we are to do,” he said. “I will carry the talisman, holding it high, presenting it. I will walk in front, going slowly. Thus,” he said, holding it high so that all could see. In the last rays of the setting sun, the jewels in the talisman caught fire, blazing like a mystic flame with all the colors of a rainbow, but brighter, far brighter than a rainbow.

  “And if it doesn’t work?” growled Conrad.

  “It must work,” Diane told him coldly.

  “It must work,” Duncan agreed calmly. “But, on the off-chance that it doesn’t, everyone run like hell. Back into the fen, back toward the island.”

  “If we can run,” said Conrad. “I won’t run. The hell with running …”

  A hand reached up and snatched the talisman out of Duncan’s grip.

  “Andrew!” Duncan roared, but the hermit was rushing forward, running toward the swarm, the blazing talisman held high in one hand, his staff flailing in the other, his mouth open and screaming words that were not words at all.

  Conrad was raging. “The stupid, show-off son-of-a-bitch!” he howled.

  Duncan leaped forward, racing to catch Andrew.

  Ahead of him a lightning stroke flared. In its afterglow Duncan saw Andrew stand for a moment, burning in bright flames. Then, as the flames snuffed out, the hermit was a smoking torch of man, a torch a vagrant gust of wind had blown out, with tendrils of greasy smoke streaming from his upraised arms. The talisman was gone and Andrew slowly crumpled, fell in upon himself into a mound of charred and smoking flesh.

  Duncan threw himself flat on the ground and the wild, terrible thought ran through him: It had not been Wulfert’s talisman, it had not been the talisman that the Horde had feared; it had not been the talisman that had protected them in their long journeying through the Desolated Land. He should have known, he told himself. On the strand the Horde—it must have been the Horde—had used Harold the Reaver to obtain the thing they feared, the one thing they had not dared to try to seize themselves. And they had gotten the talisman, but had left it there upon the strand, as a thing of little value.

  The one thing they had not gotten was the manuscript!

  The manuscript, he thought. The manuscript, for the love of God! It had been the manuscript that the Horde had attempted to destroy, to negate, to obliterate. That had been the purpose of this latest desolation—desolate the northern part of Britain and then, having isolated it, move on Standish Abbey, where the manuscript was housed. But by the time they were ready to move o
n Standish Abbey, the manuscript, the original manuscript written by the little furtive figure who had scurried about to watch and listen, was no longer there. The Horde seemed much confused, Cuthbert had said, uncertain of itself. And that was it, of course. The manuscript, they had learned or somehow sensed, was no longer where it had been, but was being carried through the very desolation the Horde had brought about.

  Little furtive man, little skulking, skittering man—Duncan said to that one who so long ago had lurked, jackallike, about the company of Jesus, who had never been one of that company nor had tried to be one of them, who had only watched and listened and then had sat huddled, in some hidden corner, to write what he had seen and heard—you did better than you knew. Writing down the words of Jesus exactly as He spoke them, with no variation whatsoever, with no paraphrasing, reporting every gesture, every movement, even the expression on His face. For that, Duncan realized, was the way it had to be. It had to be the truth, it had to be a report of events exactly as they were if it were still, centuries later, to retain the magic, recapture the glory and the power, present the full force of the Man who had spoken.

  Why, he asked that little skulking man, why did you never let me see your face? Why did you keep turning from me, why did you keep your face in shadow so that I could not know you? And that, he thought, that was a part of it as well, that was the way it had to be. For this little furtive man sought no glory for himself; all would have been for naught if he had sought the glory. He must remain, forever, the truly faceless man.

  Duncan thrust his hand into the pouch, his fingers closing on the manuscript, bringing it out, the crinkling, crackling mass of it. Rising to his feet, he held it high above his head and with a bellow of triumph, charged the looming swarm.

  Ahead of him the great, dark, shifting ball of the swarm flared with its many lightning strokes and with each stride he took, the flares grew ever brighter, but staying within the swarm itself, never reaching out. The same flaring strokes that had run the length of the rolling fog on the slope above the castle mound, flares such as the one that had reached out to turn Andrew into a smoking torch, but now they did not reach out.

  Suddenly the flaring all came together and when that happened the swarm was turned into a ball of exploding fire. It burst apart and there were many smoldering fragments flying in the air, falling all about him, smoking and shriveling as they struck the ground, to lie there for a moment, writhing as if in agony, then going quiet and dead.

  The Horde was gone and in the twilight that came creeping in with the going of the sun there came a putrid stench that rolled like a fog over everything.

  Duncan let his arm fall to his side, still clutching the wrinkled manuscript, wrinkled from being clutched too tightly.

  A wailing scream rose in the twilight, not the wailing for the world, but another wailing, a wailing very close.

  Duncan turned and saw Meg crouched above the stinking mound that had been Andrew and knew that the wailing came from her.

  “But why?” asked Diane, coming up beside him. “A hermit and a witch?”

  “He gave her a bite of cheese that first day we found her,” Duncan said. “He offered her his arm to help her along the forest trail. He stood side by side with her to witch a path out of the forest clearing. Is that not enough?”

  32

  So the manuscript would not now be authenticated. With Bishop Wise dead in Oxenford, there was no one now to put the stamp of truth upon it. It would be returned to Standish Abbey and for years it would lie there, perhaps housed in an ornate coffer, unannounced to the world and unknown because there’d be no one who could say it was true or false, an actual document or a pious fraud.

  And yet, Duncan told himself, so far as he was concerned it had been authenticated. For it had been the truth of it, the authenticity of it, the proven words and acts of Jesus, that had brought about the Horde’s destruction. Anything less than that, he told himself, would have made no mark upon the Horde.

  He touched his fingers to the pouch at his side and beneath the pressure heard the reassuring rustle of it. So many times, he thought, he had done this very thing and listened to the crackle of the parchment, but never with the thankfulness and the surety that he felt now.

  Diane stirred at his side, and when he put an arm around her she came close to him.

  The fire blazed high, and off to one side Scratch had raked off a bed of coals and was engaged, with Conrad’s help, in frying fish that he and Conrad had caught out of a little stream after begging the loan of Duncan’s shirt to improvise a net.

  “Where is Ghost?” asked Duncan. “He was around for a while, but now he’s disappeared.”

  “You won’t see him,” said Diane. “He’s off to haunt a castle.”

  “A castle. Where did he find a castle?”

  “The castle mound,” said Diane. “He came to me to ask for my permission.”

  “And you gave it to him?”

  “I told him it was not mine to give, but to go ahead. I told him that I couldn’t see any way to stop him.”

  “I told him that very thing,” said Duncan, “when he wanted to go to Oxenford with us. I’m surprised he would settle for a castle. He wanted to go to Oxenford so badly.”

  “He said that he wanted a home. He wanted a place to haunt. Said he had been hanged to a small-sized tree and you couldn’t haunt a tree, especially a little bitty one.”

  “It seems to me I’ve heard that plaint before. What would Cuthbert think of it?”

  “I think that Cuthbert, if he knew, might be rather pleased. But Ghost, poor thing, he wanted it so badly. He said he had no home …”

  “If you listen to him,” Duncan said, “he will wring your heart. I’m glad to be shut of him. He was nothing but a pest.”

  “How about Scratch?” Diane asked. “What will happen to him?”

  “He is coming along with us. Conrad invited him.”

  “I’m glad of that,” said Diane. “He and Conrad have gotten to be pals. And that is good. Scratch, despite being a demon, is not too bad a being.”

  “He saved Conrad’s life back there in the clearing,” Duncan said. “Conrad is not about to forget such an act as that.”

  “And Conrad was nice to him back there at the castle,” said Diane. “So were you. Everyone else, up to that time, had treated him absolutely rotten.”

  Meg brought them fish on birch bark platters and squatted down in front of them.

  “Don’t eat too soon,” she warned them. “Let it cool a bit.”

  “And you?” asked Diane. “What are you going to do now that the adventure’s over? Scratch is coming with us.”

  “Standish House,” said Duncan, “could use a resident witch. We’ve not had one for years.”

  Meg shook her head. “I’ve been thinking. I’ve wanted to talk with you about it. I have no hut, you see; no place at all to live. I have not a thing at all. But Andrew had a cell. Do you suppose he’d mind? I think I know where it is. If not, Snoopy said he’d show me.”

  “If that is what you want,” said Duncan, “I think Andrew might be happy to know that you were there.”

  “I think,” said Meg, “that he might have liked me just a little bit. Back, that first time we met, he took this piece of cheese out of his pocket. It had lint upon it from the pocket and there were teeth-marks on it, for he’d been nibbling on it and he gave it to me and he …”

  Her voice broke and she could speak no more. She put her hands to her eyes and, swiftly rising, hobbled off into the darkness.

  “She was in love with Andrew,” Diane said. “Strange, that a witch and hermit …”

  “We all were in love with him,” said Duncan, “cross-grained as he might have been.”

  Cross-grained and a soldier of the Lord. A soldier of the Lord to the very last, insisting that he was a soldier of the Lord when he still was a hermit. Rushing to his death as a soldier of the Lord. Andrew and Beauty, Duncan thought—a soldier of the Lord and a litt
le patient burro.

  I’ll miss them both, he thought.

  From far off, faint in a vagrant wind, came the keening of the wailing for the world. Now, Duncan told himself, as the years went on, there’d be less wailing for the world. Still some misery in the world, but with the Horde no longer on the Earth, less and less of it. Less for the she-vultures on the island to wallow in, less for them to smear upon themselves.

  Diane set the plate of fish down upon the ground, plucked at Duncan’s sleeve.

  “Come with me,” she said. “I can’t do this all alone. I must have you standing by.”

  He followed her around the fire to where Snoopy sat eating fish. Diane walked to a place in front of him. She held out the naked sword, cradled in her hands.

  “This is too precious a blade,” she said, “to belong to any human. Would you take it back into the custody of the Little People? Keeping it until there’s need of it again.”

  Snoopy carefully wiped his hands, held them out to take the sword. Tears stood in his eyes.

  “You know, then, milady, who it once belonged to?”

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  “Willingly, then,” said Snoopy, “we will take it back. We will guard it well and reverence it. Someday it may be there’ll be another hand that is worthy to hold it. But no one ever more than yours, milady.”

  “You will tell the Little People,” said Diane, “how much they honored me.”

  “It was because we trusted you,” said Snoopy. “You were not unknown to us. You’ll be found at Standish House?”

  “Yes,” said Diane. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

  “Someday we’ll come and visit you,” said Snoopy.

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” said Diane. “There’ll be cakes and ale. There’ll be dancing on the green.”

  She turned away and went back to Duncan. She took him by the arm. “And now,” she said, “I’m ready for tomorrow.”