The Fellowship of the Talisman (34 page)

The rest of the band had stopped and were clustered in the center of the clearing. As Duncan stepped smartly forward to join them, he glanced around and it seemed that the circle was hemmed in by larger and thicker trees than they had passed through heretofore. The trunks of the trees were huge and they grew almost cheek by jowl; their massive interlocking branches, springing from the trunks only a few feet above the ground, formed an impenetrable hedge that held them locked inside the circle.

He hurried up to Conrad. “What are we stopping for?” he asked. “Why don't you continue on? We have to reach the fen.”

“There is no path,” said Conrad. “A path comes into the clearing, but there is none leading out.”

“And now,” said Andrew, thumping his staff upon the ground with an exasperation summoned up to mask his fear, “there's none coming in, as well.”

Duncan spun around and looked back the way he'd come and saw that Andrew was right. The trees, somehow, had moved in and closed together to block out the path they had been following.

“With a great deal of work,” said Conrad, “we could wriggle our way through. But it would be difficult for Daniel. He can't get down on his hands and knees and crawl as can the rest of us. We'll have to do some chopping to make a way for him. Even without the work of chopping, progress will be slow.”

Meg came hobbling up. “It's witchery,” she said, “and a most convincing witchery. Had it been otherwise than cunning, I would have smelled it out.”

Snoopy jumped up and down in rage, flapping his arms. “It's them double-dipped-in-damnation gnomes,” he howled. “I told them and told them no traps need be laid against the fen, for none of the Horde was there. Concentrate, I told them, on that stretch of ground north of the river meadow. But they did not listen. Gnomes are arrogant and they never listen. They laid this intricate trap to snare the Horde and now we're caught instead. Now the gnomes are gone, scattered like all the rest of them, and they cannot be gotten to spring and free the trap.”

“You are sure of that?” asked Duncan.

“Sure of it I am.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know the gnomes. Cross-grained folk they are. And skilled in very complex magic. No other of our people could do the kind of work required to lay out a belt of forest and to …”

The sound of flapping wings cut him short and everyone looked up to see what was going on. It was Nan, coming down in an awkward plunge, wings wind-milling desperately to check her speed and to maintain her balance. She landed sprawling, falling forward on her face. Once on her feet, she lurched forward to meet them.

“The Horde is coming in!” she shrilled. “The Horde is on the way! They're pouring down the hill, moving toward the woods.”

“Now what do we do?” yapped Andrew. “What do we do now?”

“We quit our blubbering,” said Conrad gruffly, “and remember we are soldiers of the Lord.”

“I'm no soldier of the Lord,” yelled Scratch, “but if it comes to fighting, I'll fight by the side of those who are. Given the necessity, I can be a very dirty fighter.”

“I just bet you can,” said Meg.

“Let us hope,” said Duncan, “that the magic of the gnomes can work as effectively against the Horde as it seems to work with us and …”

He stopped in mid-sentence, staring at the trees.

“My God,” he whispered, “will you look at that!”

There had been, he remembered, many years ago, a roving artist who had stopped at Standish House for a bite of food and a night of shelter and wound up staying on for months, finally ending up at the abbey, where he undoubtedly still was, working at the scriptorium, drawing sketches and doing miniature paintings and other nonsensical conceits with which the monks fancied up their manuscripts and scrolls. As a boy, Duncan recalled, he had spent much time with the artist, whose name he had forgotten after all these years, hanging over the little desk on which he worked, watching in fascination the magic lines of his pencil sketching scenes and people unlike anyplace or anyone he had ever seen before. The sketch that had intrigued him the most, which the artist had given him, had depicted a group of trees that had somehow turned into rather frightening people—trees with faces that had only a rough, but frightening, equivalence to the faces of people, their limbs becoming arms, their branches many-fingered grasping hands. Trees turned into monsters.

And now here, in this magic forest of the gnomes, the trees were assuming the guise of monsters just as those trees the artist sketched had. The trunks bore flabby faces: loose-lipped, ravening mouths, most of them toothless, although a few of them had fangs; bulbous, obscene noses sprawling over half the face; ghoulish, spiteful eyes. Now there was a rustling of leaves as the limbs and branches of the trees became the arms and hands of monsters, some with fingers, some with claws, some with tentacles, and all of them waving in a frenzy of sudden energy, reaching out to grasp one, to claw one to his death.

They were hemmed in by monsters that were trees, or trees that were trying to be monsters.

“Them stinking gnomes,” raged Snoopy, “they have no decency at all. This magic of theirs cannot distinguish between friend and foe.”

From far away, apparently from the edge of the woods, back toward the slope they had descended, came muffled screaming.

“That's the hairless ones,” said Conrad. “They have reached the woods and met the trees.”

“Or the trees,” said Andrew. “The hairless ones did not strike me as ones who would do much screaming.”

“Meg, can you do anything?” Duncan shouted at the witch. “Do you have the spells to overcome this magic?”

Andrew strode forward toward the trees opposite their entry point into the circle, brandishing his staff at them and intoning Latin phrases, the most atrocious Latin, Duncan told himself, that he had ever heard.

“Shut up!” Duncan yelled at him, and to Meg, he said, “Is there any way that you can help?”

“I can but try,” Meg told him. “As I've explained before, my powers are very feeble. My witchery trappings all were taken from me.”

“Yes, I know,” said Duncan. “You have told us that. All the bat's blood, all the polecat dung, all the rest of it. But there must lie within you a power that does not need these trappings.”

He yelled at Andrew, “Desist from that silly blather. This is not a place where churchly mouthings will do us any good.”

Meg said in a small voice, “Perhaps the two of us together?”

A faint tendril of fog came drifting through the trees at that point where they had entered the clearing.

Conrad came up to stand beside Duncan and Diane. “That fog,” he said, “is the fog of the Horde. You remember, when we fought before the castle mound. It has the same smell as it had then. They came at us in a rolling bank of fog and …”

“I don't remember any smell,” said Duncan.

“Well, I do,” said Conrad. “I have a sharper nose than you have.”

“The Horde is trying to get through the woods,” said Diane. “They may be held up for a while, but perhaps not for long. Snoopy told us none of the magic traps could really stop the Horde.”

Snoopy said, “This one will hold a little longer than the others. Those crazy gnomes really put their heart into this one. All their efforts put the one place it wasn't needed. If it hadn't been for them, we would have reached the fen by now.”

“Maybe Meg can witch a path for us,” said Conrad.

“Not with Andrew bellowing out that obnoxious Latin,” said Duncan. “We'll have to shut him up.”

Something very violent was taking place within that section of the woods through which they'd come. The trees were shaking furiously, their branches whipping all about. The mouths in the trunks of the trees were opened wide as if to scream, but no sound came out, although there were other sounds—the crunch and swish of lashing branches, sudden screams and grunts.

“It's the hairless ones,” said Conrad. “They are breaking through.”

He shifted the club in his hand and took a quick step forward.

Over the top of the trees came a torn black rug, flapping furiously, plopping down toward them. Twin heads reached out for them, needle teeth rimming the open mouth, wings with hooked claws slashing at the air.

“Look out!” howled Conrad.

Diane stepped swiftly to one side as the ragged rug hovered just above her. Her sword flashed high and came down like a blade of light. It struck the flapping wing and sheared it off. The creature went lopsided, skidding through the air. Duncan's sword swung up to meet it. One of the heads came off and the remainder of the already shorn wing. The creature flopped to the ground. Conrad brought his club down on the remaining head and the thing skittered about the clearing, twisting and turning, hopping in the air and somersaulting like a chicken with its head lopped off.

Duncan saw that his blade was smeared with the sticky black ichor he had seen when he'd killed the squalling, flapping thing in the fight at the castle mound.

He threw a quick glance skyward and saw that another of the flying rugs had cleared the trees and hung above the clearing, but even as he saw it the rug veered off, heading back across the trees.

Meg and Andrew, he saw, were standing side by side, facing the opposite side of the clearing, Andrew furiously shaking his staff and bawling out his Latin, while Meg waved her arms in cabalistic gestures and cried out a high sing-song of words so twisted and kinky that they seemed to Duncan, listening to them, to be beyond the range of human tongue.

More fog was rolling into the clearing. Between the trees, low down against the ground, came a pointed head with a cruel beak, sinuous, like a snake, scuttling forward on little lizard's feet. The head reared up, surging from side to side, as if seeking, rearing itself to strike. Diane leaped forward and the glistening blade came down in a long, smooth swing. The beaked head popped into the air, fell to the ground and bounced, a flood of thick, blackish ichor pouring in a flood from the severed neck. But the long, twisting, snakelike body, propelled by its many little feet, kept on coming out. As its forepart fell to the ground, the rest of it, emerging from the trees, piled upon itself.

The trees were whipping violently, as if beaten by a vicious wind, the mouths still open and working in their silent screaming, the branches swaying furiously, the hands making grasping motions. At times screams, often cut off abruptly, sounded from the depths of the woods. One giant branch, with a dozen hands attached, heaved into the air. Grasped by the hands was the twisting, broken body of a hairless one. Another hairless one staggered through the trees, going to its knees, then rising swiftly, shuffling toward them, a club gripped in its hand.

Duncan sprang forward to meet it, but Conrad was there before him. Before the hairless one could lift its club, Conrad aimed a blow at it. The sound of a crunching skull sounded distinctly and the hairless one staggered forward, falling, but behind it was another one and another and another. The hairless ones had broken through the woods and were coming with a rush.

Duncan saw a lifted arm, with a club poised in its fist, and swung his blade in instinctive defense. The arm came off and the falling club struck his left shoulder a glancing blow. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Diane to one side and slightly behind him, her sword flashing as it struck. A hairless one came at him and he skipped aside to dodge the swinging club, caught the charging enemy in the throat with his sword point. But there was still another one behind the one that he had stabbed, and this time, he knew, the club would find its mark before he could lift his blade. And even as he thought this, two plunging, striking hoofs came across his shoulder, one of them striking the hairless one squarely in the face. Daniel's body crashed into Duncan and he went down on hands and knees, with the great horse's body looming over him, snorting with rage, striking with his hooves and teeth.

Conrad, he saw, also was on the ground, crawling, with his right arm dangling limply. Standing on spraddled legs above him was a hairless one, with the club already lifted and starting to come down. Duncan lunged upright, hurling himself forward, but he knew he'd be too late. Before he could intervene, the lifted club would come thudding down on Conrad's head. Out of nowhere, a dark, stout body was suddenly between Conrad and the hairless one, the trident thrusting upward, propelled by both hands and with all the power in Scratch's muscular body. The tines caught the hairless one squarely in the throat, just below the chin, driving deep, the full length of the tines.

A bellow rang out—Andrew's voice—“A path! We have got a path!”

Duncan now was on his feet, his attention divided between Andrew's sudden bellow and the harpooned hairless one, which slowly tipped backward, its club fallen from its hand, as Scratch still clutched the trident's shaft, tugging furiously to disengage the tines. Just beyond Conrad, Tiny leaped from the body of a hairless one that he had downed, crouching for a new attack.

For the moment, it seemed, there was nothing to attack. There were no more hairless ones. Rolling fog still poured from out the forest and the trees still were thrashing furiously, but the small band of hairless ones who had broken through now were lying on the ground, either dead or dying.

Andrew still continued shouting, “We have a path! We have a path!”

“Head for that path,” yelled Duncan. “All of you. Get out of here.”

He took a quick stride to one side, grasped Conrad around his massive body and heaved him to his feet. Even as Duncan lifted him, the big man still was scrambling wildly to retrieve his fallen club. He grasped it in his left hand and staggered forward, his right arm still dangling at his side. By main strength, Duncan awkwardly got him turned around.

“Andrew has a path,” he told him. “Get out there and follow it.”