The Fellowship of the Talisman (14 page)

“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.

Perhaps she had sensed somehow that they were safe, that there'd be no attack. And how could she have known, he wondered, and why had those others not attacked? Huddled as they were around the campfire, one swift rush from the outer darkness would have taken care of them—there would have been no way a small party such as they could have stood them off.

And in the days ahead, how would they stand them off? Surely there would come a time when the Harriers would set out to kill them. They would stay vigilant, of course, but vigilance was not the entire answer. If enough of the Harriers were willing to meet death themselves, they could do the job.

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 now 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?”