The Fellowship of the Talisman (39 page)

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 on 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 little 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.”

About the Author

During his fifty-five-year career, Clifford D. Simak produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
, writing fiction in his spare time.

Simak was best known for the book
City
, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel
Way Station
. In 1953
City
was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.