The Fellowship of the Talisman (30 page)

A bawling voice rang through the hall.

“Help me!” the voice bawled. “Do not leave me here.”

Duncan, still with a grip upon Diane, swung around to see where the voice came from.

Scratch, the demon, had jumped down off his pedestal and was on the floor, his back toward them, his hands upon the chain, leaning backward, heels dug in, tugging futilely at the chain in an effort to free it from the stone.

Duncan gave Diane a shove toward the entrance. “Run!” he shouted. “Don't look back, just run.”

He leaped for the demon and the chain, but Conrad got there first. He shoved the demon to one side, wrapped the chain around his fists, and reared back on his heels, throwing the weight of his massive body against the staple fastened in the pillar. The links of the chain hummed and whined with the strain he put upon them, but the staple held.

Duncan, moving in behind Conrad, also grasped the chain. “Now,” he said. The two of them threw their weight against the staple but it did not stir.

“No way,” gasped Conrad. “We can't pull it out.”

“Hang on. Keep it taut,” said Duncan. He stepped around Conrad to position himself between Conrad and the staple. He drew his sword and lifted it high above his head, then struck at the chain with all his strength. Sparks flew as the blade's edge struck the iron, but the sword skidded along the length of chain and the links held. Duncan struck again and again sparks flew, but the chain still stayed intact.

One wall of the reception hall was down and stones were falling from the ceiling, bouncing on the flagstones. Stone dust floated in the air, and the floor was covered with tiny bits of fragmented masonry. Any minute now, Duncan knew, the entire structure would collapse upon them.

“Let the damn chain be,” wailed the demon. “Cut off my hoof to free me from the chain.”

Conrad grunted at Duncan. “He's right,” he said. “That's the only way. Cut off his goddamn foot.”

Duncan spun around, ducked behind Conrad.

“Fall down,” he yelled at Scratch. “Hold up the foot so I can make a cut at it.”

Scratch sprawled full length on the floor and held up the clubhoof. Duncan raised his blade for the stroke. Someone joggled him. He saw that it was Andrew.

“Get out of the way,” Duncan shouted at him. “Give me room.”

But Andrew did not move. His staff was poised above his head and he brought it down in a vicious sweep. It struck the outstretched chain and at the blow the chain shattered into bits, tiny shards of metal spewing out along the floor.

Still holding the staff in his right hand, Andrew reached down with his left, grabbing the demon by the arm, and headed for the entrance, dragging the freed Scratch along behind him.

“Run for it!” yelled Conrad, and Duncan ran, with Conrad close behind him. Ahead of them Andrew loped along with surprising speed, still hauling along an outraged demon, who screamed to be let loose, that he could make it by himself. As they burst out the entrance and started down the stairway, the reception hall caved in upon itself with a thunderous roar. Small fragments of broken stone went whizzing past them, and a cloud of dust belched out of the entrance.

By this time Andrew had let go of Scratch, and the demon, despite his clubfoot, was scrambling frantically down the stairs. On the lawn at the foot of the stairs, Meg was kneeling with her arms locked around Diane's knees to keep her from struggling free. Behind Duncan and Conrad the castle continued crashing in upon itself. The central tower had already fallen and the walls were buckling.

Reaching the foot of the stairs, Duncan ran to reach Diane. He grasped her arm.

“You can't go back in,” he said.

“Cuthbert,” she said. “Cuthbert.”

“She tried to break away and go back,” said Meg. “I had to hold her. I had to seize violently upon her. She almost got away.”

“It's all right now,” said Duncan. “All of us are out.”

He grasped Diane by both shoulders, shook her.

“It's all over now,” he told her. “We can't help him. We never could have helped him. He died when he hit the floor.”

Daniel and Beauty were at the foot of the park, standing beside one another, staring up toward them, watching the crumbling of the castle. Tiny was loping up the park toward them, his ears laid back, his tail standing out behind him. Hubert, the griffin, did not seem to be about.

Scratch hobbled over to confront Andrew. He stood before him, his head tilted up to look at him.

“I thank you, reverend father,” he said, “for freeing me. That is a truly miraculous staff you have.”

Andrew made a choking sound, as if he had swallowed something that tasted very bad. His face twisted in disgust and he had the look of a man who, any minute now, might fall down dead.

“It was not death I feared,” said Scratch. “I doubt I would have died. It was something worse than death. Death is something that holds no fear for me, for I doubt I'll ever die. In a truly horrible way, I suppose I am immortal. But if the castle had crashed down upon me, I'd have been imprisoned there until the very stones should rot away with time and …”

Andrew made a croaking sound and swung his arm, as if to banish the demon forever from his sight.

“Leave me alone,” he moaned. “Begone, foul demon, from me. I want no sight of you again.”

“You do not even want my thanks?”

“Least of all I want your thanks. I want nothing of you. Forgetfulness is all I ask from you.”

“But Andrew,” said Conrad, walking up to him, “all this poor creature tries to do is express his gratitude. It is not mete you take such an attitude toward him. Demon he may be, but surely you must agree it is to his credit to feel gratitude. And he says right—you have a miracle of a staff. Why had you not told us before it held such puissant power?”

“Begone!” howled Andrew. “All of you begone. I want not to have you gaze upon me. I do not wish you to be the witnesses to my shame.”

He turned about and started walking down the park. Conrad made as if to follow him, but Duncan signed him to desist.

“But there's something wrong with him,” protested Conrad.

“In time he'll let us know,” said Duncan. “Now all he wishes is to be left alone. Give the man some time.”

Diane pulled herself away from Duncan and looked at him with level eyes.

“I'm all right now,” she said. “It now is at an end. I know what happened. With the death of the final wizard, the enchantment now is ending.”

The sun had been shining brightly, only halfway down the western sky, but now it seemed to be getting dark and the sun was gone.

The crashes from the castle were fewer, and in the deepening dark it no longer was a castle, but a heap of rubble, with only two towers still standing. A faint haze of white stone dust still could be seen hanging over the shattered masonry.

Conrad plucked at Duncan's sleeve. “Look, the standing stones,” he said. Duncan looked toward the foot of the park and saw that the standing stones were no longer standing as they had been. Many of them were canted at an angle and the lintels had fallen off them.

He turned back to stare at the castle and in the moonlight (the moonlight!) he saw it as a mound-saw it as he first had seen it when they'd come out of the chasm with the windy voice in the upper reaches of its walls chanting, “Holy! Holy! Holy!”

“So it ends,” said Diane, her voice small and soft. “The last wizard is dead and the enchantment gone. The castle a mound, as it has been for centuries.”

“There are fires,” said Conrad, and, indeed, there were, many little campfires gleaming in the dark on the hillside between the mounded castle and the hills.

“The Horde?” the demon asked. “Waiting there for us?”

“I think it unlikely,” said Duncan. “The Horde would have no need of fires.”

“More than likely,” Conrad said, “it is Snoopy and his gang.”

Duncan said to Scratch, “There's no need for you to stay. We placed no price upon the freeing of you. We have no claim upon you. If there's somewhere you want to go …”

“You mean you do not want me?”

“It's not that,” said Duncan. “Should you want to stay with us, you're welcome.”

“I thought, perhaps, the hermit. He is not happy with me. Although I cannot understand …”

“He's only dramatizing,” said Conrad. “Showing off a little. He'll get over it.”

“I have nowhere else to go,” said Scratch. “I have no other friends. I can, mayhaps, be of some small service to you. I can fetch and carry.”

“Stay, then,” said Duncan. “Our company becomes more diverse as we proceed upon the journey. We can make room for a demon.”

The ground beneath his feet, Duncan realized, no longer had the even smoothness of a lawn. It was rough and humpy, covered by wild grasses and low-growing ground cover that rasped, as he moved, against his boots. Somewhere, off in the distance, an owl was hooting, and in the hills above the castle mound a wolf howled mournfully.

The moonlight was bright, the moon a night or two from fullness, and to the south he caught a glimpse of the river, shining like a mirror.

Saved again, he thought, jerked out of the jaws of disaster by the most unlikely of events, the castle's enchantment broken by the death of the last of those who had held it together. Cuthbert had committed suicide, whether intentionally or in a fit of insanity, there was no way of knowing. But it had been suicide. He had hurled himself from the balcony to the floor below.

Diane moved close to him and he put an arm about her, held her tightly. She leaned her head upon his shoulder.

“I am sorry,” he said. “Sorry that it happened this way.”

“I should have known,” she said. “I should have realized that one day Cuthbert would be gone and the castle gone with him. I guess I did know, way back in my mind, but I didn't allow myself to even think of it.”

He stood, holding her closely, trying to give her the little comfort that he could, looking out beyond the canted standing stones to the fires that blazed along the slope.

“There must be a lot of them out there,” he said. “Snoopy told us he'd collect an army.”

“Duncan,” asked Diane, “have you seen Hubert anywhere?”

“No, I haven't. He must be around. He was out there just a while ago with Daniel and Beauty.”

She shook her head against his shoulder. “I don't think so. I think I've lost him, too. He was one with the castle. He'd been here so long.”

“As soon as it is light,” said Duncan, “we'll look for him. He may wander in before the night is over.”

“There's someone coming,” Conrad said.

“I don't see anyone.”

“Just the other side of the standing stones. Snoopy, more than likely. I think we should go out to meet them. They won't want to pass beyond the stones. They know something's happened, but they can't know quite what.”

“There's no danger now,” said Diane.

“They'd not know that,” Conrad said.

Conrad started down the slope and the rest of them followed. They passed between the standing stones and now it could be seen that a band of half a dozen little figures stood there waiting for them.

One of them stepped forward, and Snoopy's voice spoke to them in a scolding tone. “I warned you,” he said. “Why can't you pay attention? I warned you to shun the castle mound.”

25

Snoopy knelt on the ground beside the fire and swept an area clear of litter with his hand.

“Watch closely,” he said. “I'll draw a map to show you the situation.”

Duncan, standing to one side, bent over to stare at the smooth place on the ground, remembering how the goblin had drawn a map for them that first day they'd met in the chapel of the church.

Snoopy picked up a stick, stabbed a hole into the ground. “We are here,” he said. He drew a ragged line along the map's northern edge. “There are the hills,” he said. To the south he drew a snaky line. “That's the river.” To the west he made a sweeping line, running south, then turning west and looping to the north.

“The fen,” said Conrad.

Snoopy bobbed his head. “The fen.”

He ran the stick along the line that represented the hills, curved it east, made a tight loop, and continued south of the snaky line that was the river.

“The Horde,” he said, “is stretched out along that line. They have us hedged in north and east and south. Mostly hairless ones, with some of the other Horde members mixed in. They have us backed against the fen.”

“Any chance of breaking through?” asked Conrad.

Snoopy shrugged. “We haven't tried. Anytime we want to, we can. We can filter out, a few here, a few there. They won't even try to stop us. We're not the ones they want. It is you they want. They lost you here; they know you couldn't have gotten out of this pocket. Perhaps they think you may be hiding in the mound. If that's the case, they tell themselves, the time will come when you must move out. They know you'll have to surface sometime and then they'll have you. And you can't filter out as we can.”

“You mean,” said Duncan, “that they've just been sitting there and you've been just sitting here?”

“Not entirely,” said Snoopy. “Not us just sitting here, I mean. We've got dozens of magics set out for them, foolish little traps that will not really hold them, but that can hamper and confuse them, slow up any progress they might make. Some of the traps are mean as sin. They know they're there and don't want to tangle with them until they have to. If they start to move anywhere along their line, we'll know.”

“You're sticking out your necks for us,” said Duncan. “We had not intended that you should. Help us, of course. We were glad of the help you gave us. But we never expected this.”

“As I told you,” Snoopy said, “we can back off anytime we want to. There's no overwhelming danger for us. You're the ones who are in danger.”