Fellowship of the Talisman

21

Cuthbert lay propped up in bed by two pillows placed atop one another against the headboard. He wore a nightcap of startling red and a nightgown with ruffles at the throat and wrists. He was a sunken man. His eyes were sunken deep beneath white, bushy eyebrows, the cap coming down so far upon his forehead that it seemed to rest upon the eyebrows. His face was sunken so that his cheekbones could be seen, the skin drawn tightly over them, his nose stabbing out like a beak, the mouth a furrow between the stabbing nose and outjutting chin. His chest was sunken, his shoulders rising above it in their bony knobbiness. Beneath the coverlet his stomach was so flat and sunken that the pelvic bones stood out, making twin humps beneath the bedclothes.

He cackled at Duncan, then spoke in a raspy voice, “So. Diane tells me you smote them hip and thigh. That’s the way to do it. That’s the one language that they understand.”

“My band and I,” said Duncan. “I did not do it all alone.”

“You’ll see the others of them later,” Diane told the wizard. “They are a motley group.”

She said to Duncan, “You do not mind if I call them a motley group?”

“I suppose you could call them that,” said Duncan, not too well pleased.

“You told me of them,” Cuthbert said to Diane. “A dog and horse and also a little burro. I’ll want to see them, too.”

“The dog, perhaps,” said Diane. “Certainly not the horse.”

“I want to see the entire tribe of them,” insisted Cuthbert. “I want to gaze upon this little band that smote them hip and thigh. By gad, it does me good to know there are such still in the land. Not running squealing from them, but standing up to them.”

“The horse and burro would have trouble getting here,” protested Diane. “All those stairs.”

“Then I’ll go and see them.”

“You know, sire, you must not exert yourself.”

He grumbled at her with mumbling words. He said to Duncan, “This is what happens when a man grows old. You can’t exert yourself. You can’t walk to the water closet. You must squat upon a pot to pee. You must move slowly and you must remain in bed. You must eat soft foods because your gut will not handle honest meat. You must be sparing with the wine. You must do not a single thing that you may enjoy, but many that you don’t.”

“In a short while,” said Duncan, “it would be my hope and prayer that you’ll again be doing all the things you most enjoy. But you must take what care you can…”

“You’re in league with her,” Cuthbert accused him. “Everyone is in league with her. She can twist a strong man about her little finger. Look at her, the hussy, all that golden hair and the way she bats her eyes.”

“You know, sire,” said Diane sharply, “that I never bat my eyes. And if your behavior does not improve considerably I shall cook you up a mess of greens and feed them to you for supper. And see you eat them, too.”

“You see,” Cuthbert said to Duncan. “A man hasn’t got a chance. Especially should he grow old. Take care you do not advance beyond the age of thirty. And now suppose you tell me about your little band and this great battle.”

“We would not have survived the battle,” Duncan said, “had it not been for Diane and her griffin and the Wild Huntsman…”

“Ah, the Huntsman — a stout fellow, that one. I well remember the time…” He speared Duncan with a sharp glance.

“Don’t tell me you’re the Huntsman. A close relative, perhaps, but surely not the Huntsman. You can’t fool me with your tales. I know the Huntsman. You can’t palm yourself off…”

“Sire,” said Diane, “I told you of this gentleman. He’s not the Huntsman nor did he claim to be. You’re imagining again. Duncan Standish is the scion of a great house in the north.”

“Yes, yes,” said Cuthbert, “now I do recall. The Standish, you say. The Standish, yes, I have heard of them. If you are of that house, what are you doing here? Why did you not tarry in the safety of the north, behind the castle walls?”

“I go with messages to Oxenford,” said Duncan.

“Oxenford? Oxenford. Yes, I know of Oxenford. A great company of distinguished scholars. I have friends in Oxenford.”

He let his head drop back on the pillow and closed his eyes. Duncan looked questioningly at Diane and she signaled patience.

After a time the wizard stirred on the pillows, opened his eyes and hauled himself into a more upright position. He looked at Duncan.

“You’re still here,” he said. “I thought you might have left. You sat throughout my nap. You must excuse me, sir.

Unaccountably, at times, I fall into these little naps.”

“You feel better now, sire?”

“Yes, much better now. Diane told me you had a question for me.”

“It’s about the Horde of Evil. My archbishop told me…”

“And what archbishop might that be?”

“His Grace of Standish Abbey.”

“A fuddy-duddy,” said the wizard. “A blathering fuddy-duddy. Do you not agree?”

“At times I have thought him so.”

“And what does he say of the Horde of Evil?”

“Very little, sire. He knows not what it is. He believes it feeds on human misery and that the devastations, which come at regular intervals, may be periods when it rejuvenates itself.”

“You would have me tell you what the Evil is?”

“If you know, sire.”

“Of course I know. What do you think I and my band of now-dead brethren have been doing all these years? The answer, of course, is that we have been performing many tasks and digging deep for truth. In the course of our work we have not ignored the Evil. What would you know of it?”

“What it is, sire. Where it came from. Where did it start?”

“It came here from the stars,” the wizard said. “This we do know. Why it came we are not certain. It may have been driven from the stars by a stronger force against which it could not stand. Or it may have run so rampant in its rapacity among the stars that there was nothing left for it to feed upon and so, rather than face starvation, it sought out another world and by pure chance, or perhaps not so much by chance, came upon this poor world of ours, where it found the teeming life that could provide the misery that it needed to feed upon and grow. Apparently it has done well here.

With the weight of this world’s misery it has increased in strength and numbers with the passing of each century. If something is not done soon it will swallow all the life of Earth and then, perhaps, be forced to go again among the stars to seek another world.

“It came here an untold time ago. Of the years that it’s been here, we have no measure. When man arose, with his greater capacity for misery — a greater capacity than our friends, the beasts, although they, too, can suffer misery — it began to reap a richer harvest and in consequence has waxed the fatter, and now there seems but little prospect that it can be stopped or stood against. That is why I treasure so greatly the stand you made against it, the evidence that there are men who still will stand fast against it, with no fear in their hearts.”

“But you are wrong,” said Duncan. “I did have fear.”

“And yet you stood.”

“Sire, there was nothing else to do. We had no place to run.”

“You’re a truthful man,” the wizard said. “It takes a truthful man, and a courageous one, to confess the fear within him. But, then, you are a puissant warrior.”

“That I’m not,” said Duncan. “Trained in arms, of course, but until this journey I had never drawn a blade in anger.

Rather, I am a farmer. I’m much more interested in growing better beef and mutton, raising better crops…”

“It is well,” said Cuthbert. “Britain, and the world, has need of farmers such as you. More need, perhaps, than for those who can wield a mighty blade. And yet, also, you are proficient with the blade.”

He said to Diane, “Greens, you say. I will not eat your greens. Greens and pottage and sometimes gruel, that is all you ever feed me.” He said to Duncan, “How can you expect a man to keep up his strength with such hog slop as that?”

Duncan said, “It may be that your stomach…”

“What does a minx like her know of a grown man’s stomach? Meat, that’s what I need. Good red meat, not done to a crisp, but pink throughout and with blood upon the trencher.”

“I fed you meat,” Diane reminded him, “and you threw it up.”

“Badly cooked,” he said. “Very badly cooked. Give me a properly cooked haunch of beef or a saddle of mutton and…”

His mind seemed to jump. He said to Duncan, “You asked me another question. What was it, now?”

“I had another question. Several other questions. But I had not asked them yet. My archbishop…”

“So, we’re back to that old woman of a churchman once again.”

“He said that the devastations the Evil causes may be for the purpose of rejuvenation, setting up an area where there will be no interference in their rejuvenation procedure. That there they grow in strength, and perhaps in numbers, so they’ll be ready for more centuries of their evil-doing.”

“I’ve heard the theory,” said the wizard, “and in certain instances there may be some truth in it, although it seems more likely that the devastations serve another purpose, probably designed to block developments that might, in the long run, improve the lot of mankind.

“In this instance, in this present devastation, I am certain that the devastation is not for rejuvenation if, in fact, it ever is. This time the Evil is running very scared. It is frightened of something that will happen. It is gathering its forces to prevent the happening. And yet, for some reason, the Evil appears very much confused, uncertain of itself, as if some unforeseen event had come about that makes all its planning go for naught.

“I was pleased, to tell you the truth, when the devastation started in this area, for now, I told myself, it would be easier to study it at firsthand rather than from old records and the observations of others, who may not have been as accurate in what they had written down as might be desirable. Here was the chance of a lifetime for such a one as I, but I was hampered greatly by the lack of trusty associates. I told myself, however, that I could do the work alone, for I had many years of experience in such a labor. So I worked on it…”

“You worked too hard,” said Diane. “That’s what’s the matter with you now.”

The wizard’s mind jumped. “We were talking about the Huntsman,” he said. “Do you know he once spent a week with us? There were several of us then and sometimes we’d have guests of a slow weekend. But the Huntsman was no invited guest. He dropped in. He came riding in one evening on his horse and with all those dogs of his. They landed in the big dining room you saw, where we were just finishing a well-cooked meal. The dogs jumped up on the sideboard and made off with a platter of partridge, a ham, and a venison pot roast, and fought one another up and down the hall for each one’s fair share of it, while those of us at table sat petrified with the gaucherie of it. The Huntsman, meantime, hoisted a small keg of beer to drink directly from the bung-hole, pouring it directly down his throat and I swear you could hear the glugging of it when it hit his stomach. Although after that first onslaught it all got straightened out and we had a jolly week of it, with those dogs eating us out of house and home and the Huntsman drinking us out of house and home. But we didn’t mind too much, for the Huntsman told us tales that thereafter, for a full year’s time, we recited to one another, savoring them again.”

“You must have had good times in those days,” said Duncan, saying the first thing that came to mind.

“Oh, we did,” the wizard said. “You must ask me about that night when a band of drunken rogues brought the demon to us. Having tired of him themselves, and looking to get rid of him, they thought it a splendid joke to bring him as a gift to us. By the way, you have met the demon, have you not?”

“Yes, I have,” said Duncan.

“As demons go,” the wizard said, “he is not a bad sort. He claims he has not a single vicious bone in his body and while I’d not go so far as that…”

“Sire,” said Diane, in a gentle voice, “you were talking about the Horde of Evil.”

Cuthbert seemed somewhat surprised.

“Were we?” he asked. “Is that what we were talking of?”

“I believe it was,” said Duncan.

“As I was saying,” said the wizard. “Or was I saying it? I just cannot remember. But, anyhow, I think it likely that most people have no real idea of how a congress of wizards live. I would imagine they might equate a wizard’s castle with a monastery where the little monks wind their silent ways through mazes of doctrinal theology, clutching their ragged little souls close within their breasts, scarcely daring to breathe for fear they will draw into their lungs a whiff of heresy. Or they might think of a castle such as this as a place of hidden trapdoors, with sinister figures, black draped and cowled, hiding around corners or ambushed behind the window drapes, with sinister winds whistling down the corridors and hideous odors billowing from thaumaturgic laboratories. It is, of course, nothing like unto either one of these. While this place now is quiet from lack of occupants, there was a day when it was a gleesome place, jocular and laughter loving. For we made a jovial group when we put our work aside. We worked hard, it is true, for the tasks we set ourselves were not easy ones, but we also knew how to spend merry hours together. Lying here, I can call the roll of those old companions. There were Caewlin and Arthur, Aethelbehrt and Raedwald. Eadwine and Wulfert — and I can think of them all most kindly, but for Wulfert I feel remorseful pangs, for while what we did was necessary, it still was a hard and sad action to be taken. We turned him out the gate…”

“Sire,” said Diane, “you have forgotten that Wulfert was kin of mine.”

“Yes, yes,” said Cuthbert. “I forget again and my tongue runs on. It seems to me that lately I do much forgetting.”

He made a thumb at Diane and said to Duncan, “That is quite correct. Wizard blood runs in her veins, or perhaps you already know. Mayhaps she has told you…”

“Yes, she had,” said Duncan.

The wizard lay quietly on the pillows and it seemed the talk had ended, but again he stirred and spoke.

“Yes, Wulfert,” he said. “He was like unto a brother to me. But when the decision came to be made, I sided with the others.”

He fell into a silence and then again he spoke. “Arrogance,” he said. “Yes, it was his arrogance. He set himself against the rest of us. He set his knowledge and his skills against our skills and knowledge. We told him that he wasted time, that there was no power in his talisman, and yet, setting at naught our opinions and our friendships, he insisted that it had great power. He said it was our jealousy that spoke. We tried to reason with him. We talked to him like brothers who held great love of him. But he’d not listen to us, stubbornly he stood against us all. Granted that this talisman of his was a thing of beauty, in more ways than one, since he was a magnificent craftsman, a skilled worker in the arcane, but it takes more than beauty…”

“You are sure of that?” asked Diane.

“My dear, I am sure of it. A petty power, perhaps. He claimed that this silly talisman of his could be used to go against the Horde of Evil and that was pure insanity. A mere petty power, is all. Certainly nothing that could be used against the Evil.”

“How is it,” Diane asked, “that you never spoke to me of this before? You knew I was seeking word of him, that I hoped to find the talisman.”

“Why should I cause you pain?” the wizard asked. “I would not have said it now, but in my silliness and weakness, it slipped out of me. I would not willingly have spoken, for I knew how loyal you were to him. Or to his memory. For I suppose he now is dead. I think you told me that.”

“Yes, for a century or more. I found where he was buried. In the village just beyond the hills. The last years of his life he posed as a saintly man. The village would have run him out if they’d known he was a wizard.”

The old man’s eyes were misted. A tear went running down one wasted cheek.

He waved a hand at them. “Leave me now,” he said. “Go. Leave me with my grief.”