The Fellowship of the Talisman

12

They found Andrew's trail, but it proved to be the wrong trail. Halfway up a steep hillside it petered out to nothing.

They had left the enchantment far behind them, had escaped from it. Now there were no rainbow tints, no feeling that the landscape had been skewed. The land was the kind of land one would have expected to find. The oaks were honest oaks, the honest boulders had honest lichens on them, the stretches of underbrush were normal underbrush. The feeling of gloom was gone, the foreboding had dropped away.

It had been hard work. There had been no level ground. Constantly they had been traveling steep slopes, or making their careful way down steep slopes, which in some cases was almost as exhausting as the climbing.

Now that the trail had finally disappeared, Duncan glanced up at the sky. The sun was almost at its zenith.

"Let us stop to eat and rest," he said. "Then we'll strike east and try to find the right trail." He said to Andrew, "You are sure that there is one."

Andrew nodded. "I've traveled it, but only a few times and that many years ago. I am not well acquainted with it."

The trail had been lost on a small shelf of fairly level ground, extending for not more than a few yards before the steep slope took up again. Conrad gathered wood and started a fire. Daniel and Beauty stood with hanging heads, resting from hard travel. Tiny flopped down on the ground.

"We could use Ghost," said Conrad, "but he is far away, spying out the land ahead of us."

"I'll say this for Ghost," said Andrew. "I have a lot more respect for him than I had before. It takes real courage for a ghost to go out in broad daylight and do the kind of job that he's been doing."

A gray shadow moved among the trees below them.

"There's a wolf," said Duncan.

"There are a lot of wolves around," said Andrew. "More than there ever were since the Harriers came."

Another gray shadow followed the first, and farther down the slope was yet another one.

"At least three of them," said Duncan. "And there may be more. Do you think they might be following us?"

"Nothing to worry about," said Conrad. "A wolf is a coward. Face up to one and he runs away."

Meg put her arms around herself, hugging herself, shivering a little. "They smell blood," she said. "They can smell blood before there is any blood."

"Old wives' tale," said Conrad.

"Not a tale," Meg said. "I know. They know when death is coming."

"Not our blood," said Conrad. "Not our death."

A wind had come up and far down the hill it could be heard moaning in the trees. The ground was thick with fallen leaves. And over all of it was a somberness, the sense of autumn, a psychic warning against the coming of the snow. Duncan felt a faint unease, although there was nothing, he told himself, to be uneasy about. In just a short time now they would find the right trail and be on their way again, following a harder road than they had first intended, but on their way at last.

How many more days, he wondered, and was amazed that he had no idea. Once they were through these hills, more than likely, they would make faster time. So far they had not hurried, but gone along at an easy pace. Now was the time, once they were squared around, he told himself, to really cover ground.

"If Snoopy were only here," said Andrew, "he would know the way, how to find the trail. But that is wishful thinking. There is no honor in him. Even when he told us, when he gave his word, he had no intention of being any help to us."

"We'll make out without him," Duncan said, a sharpness to his words.

"At least," said Conrad, "we walked out of the witchery that was laid for us."

"The witchery, yes," said Andrew. "But there will be other things."

They ate and then moved on, striking toward the east, or as close to east as was possible, for in this tangled, tortuous land there was no such thing as heading in any one direction. There were diversions-a bad lay of ground, a particularly steep climb that they tried to skirt, a tangle of fallen trees they must go around. But, in general, they trended toward the east.

The sun went down the sky and there was still no sign of any trail. They moved through a region that had no trace of men, or of there ever having been any men. There were no burned farmsteads, no cuttings where timber had been harvested. Ancient trees stood undisturbed, hoary with age.

From time to time they caught glimpses of wolves, but always at a distance. There was no way of knowing if they were the same wolves they had seen earlier.

We are lost, Duncan told himself, although he said nothing to the others. Despite all that Andrew said, all that he professed to know, there might not be a trail. For days they might keep plunging into the great wilderness and find nothing that would help them, floundering in confusion. Perhaps, he thought, it might be the enchantment still at work, although in a less obvious manner than had been the case before.

The sun was almost gone when they came down a long slope into a deep glen, rimmed by the hills, as if it might be sunk into the very earth, a place of quiet and shadows, filled with a sense of melancholy. It was a place where one walked softly and did not raise his voice. The light of the sun still caught the hilltops above them and gilded some of the autumn trees with flaming color, but here night was falling fast.

Duncan hurried ahead to catch up with Conrad.

"This place," said Conrad, "has an evil smell to it."

"Evil or not," said Duncan, "it is a place to camp. Sheltered from the wind. Probably we'll find water. There must be a stream somewhere. Better than being caught on some windy hillside."

"I thought to catch sight of something ahead," said Conrad. "A whiteness. Like a church, perhaps."

"An odd place for a church," said Duncan.

"I could not be sure. In this dark, it is hard to see."

As they talked they kept moving ahead. Tiny had fallen back to walk with the two of them.

Ahead of them Duncan caught a glimpse of whiteness.

"I think I see it, too," he said. "Straight ahead of us."

As they progressed a little farther they could see that it was a building-for all the world like a tiny church. A thin tall spire pointed toward the sky and the door stood open. In front of it a space had been cleared of underbrush and trees, and they went across this space filled with wonder. For there should not be a church here, even a small one. Round about lived no one who would attend it, and yet there it stood, a small building, like a toy church. A chapel, Duncan thought. One of those hidden chapels tucked away, for one obscure reason or another, in places that were off the beaten track.

Duncan and Conrad came to a halt in front of it, and Andrew came hurrying up to them.

"Jesus of the Hills," he said. "The Chapel of the Jesus of the Hills. I had heard of it, but had never seen it. I had no idea how to get to it. It was a thing spoken of half in wonder, half in disbelief."

"And here it is," said Conrad.

Andrew was visibly shaken. The hand that held the staff was trembling.

"A holy place," said Duncan. "A place of pilgrimage, perhaps."

"A holy place only recently. Only the last few hundred years," said Andrew. "It stands on most unholy ground. In earlier times it was a pagan shrine."

"There are many holy places that were raised on areas that once were special to the pagans," Duncan told him. "In the thought, perhaps, that the pagans would more readily accept Christianity if the places of worship were built on familiar ground."

"Yes, I know," said Andrew. "Reading in the Fathers, I ran across some mention of such thoughts. But this one-this was something else."

"A pagan shrine, you said. A place of the Druids, most likely."

"Not the Druids," said Andrew. "Not a shrine for humans. A gathering place for evil, where high carnival was held upon certain days."

"But if such were the case, why was a chapel built here? It would seem to me this was a place the Church had best avoid, for a time at least."

"I do not know," said Andrew. "Not with any certainty. There were in the olden days certain militant churchmen who perforce must seize evil by the horns, must confront it face to face…"

"And what happened?"

"I do not know," said Andrew. "The legends are unclear. There are many stories, but perhaps no truth to any of them."

"But the chapel's here," said Conrad. "It was allowed to stand." Duncan strode forward, went up the three shallow steps that led up to the chapel door, and through the door.

The place was tiny, a dollhouse sort of place. There was one window on each side made of low-grade colored glass that glinted in the fading light, and six pews, three on each side of the narrow aisle. And above the altar.

Duncan stared in horror. He gagged and knew the bitterness of gall gushing in his mouth. His stomach knotted at the sight of the crucifix that hung behind the altar. It was carved out of a large oak log, all of it in one piece, the cross and the carven Jesus hanging on the cross.

The crucifix was upside down. The figure of Christ was standing on His head, as if He had been caught in the midpoint of a somersault. Filth had been smeared upon Him and obscene sentences, written in Latin, were painted on the wood.

It was, Duncan thought fleetingly, as if someone had struck him hard across the mouth. It was only with an effort that he kept his knees from buckling. And even as he reacted to the profanation and the sacrilege, wondered why he should-he, the mildest of Christians, with no great piety or devotion. And yet a man, he thought, who risked his neck and the necks of others to perform a service to the Church.

The crucifix was a mockery, a gusty whoop of pagan laughter, a burlesque of the Faith, a hooting, a ridicule, a scoffing, and, perhaps as well, a hatred. If the enemy cannot be conquered, at least he can be ridiculed and laughed at.

Conrad had pointed out that despite the pagan ground on which it had been built, the chapel had been allowed to stand. And in this observation there was implicit the question of why it had been allowed to stand. And this, the reversed crucifix and the violence that had been done it, was the reason. Years ago a man of Christ had come, a militant man intent on ramming Christianity down a pagan throat, and had built the chapel. And now the joke had been turned upon him and the chapel stood a mockery.

He heard the gasps behind him as Conrad and Andrew saw the crucifix and caught, for an instant, the impact of the horror.

Duncan whispered at them, "A mockery. A living mockery. But Our Lord can stand that. He can take a little mockery."

The chapel, he saw, was clean and well cared for. There was no sign of the ravages of time. It had been swept but recently. It had been kept in good repair.

Slowly he began to back out of the door, Conrad and Andrew backing with him. On the steps outside sat a huddled Meg.

"You saw," she said to Duncan. "You saw?"

Dumbly, stricken, he nodded his head.

"I did not know," she said. "I did not know we were coming to this place. If I had, I'd have told you, stopped you."

"You knew what was here?"

"I had heard of it. That was all. Heard of it."

"And you do not approve of it?"

"Approve of it? Why should I disapprove of it? I have no quarrel with it. And yet, I would not have had you see it. I've eaten your food, ridden on your horse, your great dog did not tear hunks of flesh from me, you ran no sword through me, the big one reached out his hand to help me rise, he boosts me onto the horse. Even that sour apple of a hermit gave me cheese. Why should such as I wish any ill for you?"

Duncan reached down and patted her on the head. "It's all right, grandmother. We take it in our stride."

"Now what do we do?" asked Andrew.

"We spend the night here," Duncan said. "We are worn out with our travels of the day. We're in no shape to go on. We need some food and rest."

"Not a bite of food will I be able to swallow," said Andrew. "Not in such a place."

"What do we do then?" asked Duncan. "Go running out into the hills, fighting through the woods in the dark? We'd not make a mile."

Thinking, even as he said the words, that were it not for Andrew and Meg, he and Conrad could go, leave this pagan place behind them, find a safer camping place. Or keep going all the night, if that were necessary, to put some distance between them and the Chapel of the Jesus of the Hills. But Andrew's legs were tottery from the punishment they'd taken, and Meg, although she probably would deny it, was near the end of her endurance. Back at the hermit's cave he'd worried about the volunteers they were taking on, and here was evidence that he'd been right in worrying.

"I'll get some wood and start a fire," said Conrad. "There's a stream over to the right. I heard running water there."

"I'll go and get some water," Andrew said. Duncan, watching him, knew the kind of courage it had taken for him to offer to go alone out into the dark.

Duncan called Daniel and Beauty in, took the saddle off Daniel and the packs off Beauty. Beauty huddled against Daniel, and he seemed quite content to have her there. The two of them, Duncan thought, know as well as we that there is something wrong. Tiny prowled restlessly about, head held high to catch any scent of danger.

Meg and Conrad did the cooking at the fire that Conrad lighted only a short distance in front of the steps leading up to the chapel. The lights from the flames of the fire washed across the whiteness of the tiny structure.

Up on the hill to the west a wolf howled and was answered by another from the north.

"Some of those we saw early in the day," said Conrad. "They are still around."

"The wolves have been bad this year," said Andrew.

The glen, as full night came down, held the dank, wet feel of fear, of danger walking on soft pads, moving in on them. Duncan, feeling this, wondered if this sense of apprehension arose from having seen the defamation of the crucifix, or if it would have been present if there had been no chapel and no crucifix.

"Conrad and I will do double watch tonight," said Duncan.

"You're forgetting me again," said Andrew, but with something in his voice that sounded to Duncan as if it might be relief.

"We want you rested," said Duncan. "The both of you, so that we can put in a long day tomorrow. We'll start as soon as we can see. Well before full morning light."

He stood beside the fire, staring out into the dark. It was hard, he found, not to take alarm at an imagined shape or an imagined noise.

Twice he thought he saw movement out beyond the campfire circle, but each time decided it was no more than his imagination, sharpened by the fear that he sought to conceal but could not, himself, deny.

The wolves occasionally howled, not only from the west and north, but from the east and south as well. This country, he told himself, was crawling with the beasts. However, the howls still were from a distance; the wolves did not seem to be moving in. They might come later, Duncan told himself, after they had worked up more courage, and the activity about the campfire had quieted down. Although of wolves, they need have no fear. If they came in, Daniel and Tiny would wreak havoc on them.

If there were anything to be feared, it would be something other than the wolves. Remembering, once again he saw the frog's mouth full of teeth, the glowing eyes, the suggestion of a face that was made up of smooth planes and sharp angles-the face that had stared out at them from beyond the campfire of the night before. And the snaky evilness that had surged out of the black pool in the swamp.

Meg called them in for food and they squatted around the fire, wolfing it down. Andrew, despite his assertion that he would not be able to swallow a single morsel, did full justice to the meal.

There was little talk, only a sentence now and then and of inconsequential things. No one talked about what they'd found inside the chapel. It was as if all of them were busy in an effort to wipe it from their minds.

But it was not a thing, Duncan found, that could be wiped away. Never for a moment since he first had seen it had it been more than a short distance from his consciousness. Mockery, he had told himself, and it was that, of course, but it also would be, he thought, more than mockery. Hatred, he had said, almost as an afterthought. But now, having thought on it, he knew that there was in it as much hatred as there was mockery.

And that was understandable. The pagan gods of ancient days had a right to hate this new faith that had risen something less than two millennia ago. But he chided himself that he should think of the pagan gods as somehow legitimate in their hatred, that he should admit, even parenthetically, that they had existed and did now exist. This was not, he reminded himself, the way a Christian should be thinking. A devout Christian would consign them all to limbo, would deny there ever had been such as they. But this, he knew, was a viewpoint that he could not accept. He must still conceive of them as the ever-present enemy, and this was especially true in this place, the Desolated Land.

His fingers dropped to the purse suspended from his belt and beneath them he felt the crinkle of the pages that he carried. Here lay his faith, he thought; here, in this place where he sat, lay another faith. Perhaps a mistaken faith, perhaps a faith that should not be accepted, that instead should be opposed with every power at one's command, but a faith nevertheless-a faith that man, in his ignorance, with no other faith, and yearning toward something that could intercede for him against the vastness of infinity and the cruelty of fate, had embraced despite all its cruelty and horror, thinking perhaps that any fate that was worth embracing must be horrible and cruel, for in those two qualities lay power, and power was something that man needed to protect himself against the outer world.

Here on this very ground, undoubtedly, had been performed certain hideous and repugnant rites that he had no knowledge of and was glad he had no knowledge of. Here humans may have died as sacrifices. Here blood had been spilled upon the ground, here obscene practices had been acted out, here monstrous entities had trod with evil intent-and not only recently, but extending back into unguessed time, perhaps into that time that anteceded mankind.

Daniel walked up close to where he was sitting, thrust down his head to nuzzle at his master. Duncan stroked the big horse's head, and Daniel snorted softly at him.

From the west a wolf howled, and it seemed that this time the howl was closer.

Conrad came striding up to stand near the horse and man.

"We'll have to keep the fire burning high throughout the night," he said. "Wolves have a fear of fire."

"We have naught to fear of wolves," said Duncan. "They are not driven by hunger. There is plenty for them to pull down and eat out there in the woods."

"They are closing in," said Conrad. "I have been catching glimpses of their eyes."

"They are curious. That is all."

Conrad hunkered down beside Duncan. He pushed the head of his club back and forth upon the ground.

"What do we do tomorrow?"

"I suppose we go on hunting for Andrew's trail."

"And what if we don't find the trail?"

"We'll find it. There had to be a trail across these hills."

"What if enchantment closes the trail to us? Makes us not to see it."

"We escaped the enchantment, Conrad." Although, Duncan reminded himself, he had entertained the thought, earlier in the day, that the enchantment might still be with them.

"We are lost," said Conrad. "We don't know where we are. I don't think Andrew knows."

Out at the edge of the firelight circle two eyes gleamed back at Duncan and then, almost instantly, were gone.

"I saw one of your wolves just now," he said to Conrad. "Or at least his eyes."

"Tiny has been watching," Conrad said, "pacing back and forth. He knows they are out there."

They were moving in closer now. The darkness at the edge of the campfire circle was rimmed by shining eyes.

Tiny went walking out toward them. Conrad called him back. "Not yet, Tiny. Not quite yet."

Duncan rose to his feet.

"We're in for it," said Conrad quietly. "They are getting set to rush us."

Daniel switched around to face the gathering wolves. He tossed his head, snorting in anger. Tiny, coming back, ranged himself by Conrad. His ruff was lifted and a growl gurgled in his throat.

One of the wolves paced forward. In the firelight his gray fur seemed almost white. He was large and raw-boned, a death's head of a wolf. He seemed to teeter forward, his great gaunt head thrust out, the lips pulled back from the fangs, his eyes glittering in the reflection of the flames.

Another wolf came up behind and to one aide of him, stopped with its head at the first wolf's shoulder.

Duncan drew his blade. The rasp of drawn metal was harsh in the silence that had fallen on the clearing. The firelight glinted off the shining steel.

He said to the horse beside him, "Steady, Daniel, steady, boy."

At a quick shuffle of feet behind him he risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that it was Andrew. He held the staff half lifted. The cowl had fallen to his shoulders, and his graying hair was a halo in the firelight.

From the darkness at the edge of the clearing a voice spoke, loud and clear, but using words that Duncan had never heard before-not English, neither Latin nor Greek, nor with the inflection of the Gaulish tongue. Words that were harsh and guttural and with a snarl in them.

At the words the wolves came charging in: the big wolf that had first appeared paced by the second one that had come up to stand with him, and others racing out on each side, coming in half crouched, tensed to leap, bursting from the dark at the signal or the command of the one who had spoken from the darkness.

At Duncan's side, Daniel reared up, striking out with his front hoofs. Tiny was a streak of unleashed hatred lunging at the beasts. The big wolf rose, soaring effortlessly from the ground, his jaws aimed at Duncan's throat. The sword licked out and caught his outstretched neck, hurling him to one side with the impact of the thrust.

The second wolf, running beside him and leaping as he ran, crumpled under Conrad's club. Out in front of Conrad, Tiny seized a third by the throat and with a powerful toss of the head sent him spinning through the air.

Another wolf leaped at Duncan, fangs gleaming, mouth wide open for the strike. Even as Duncan lifted the blade, a spearlike stick came thrusting from one side and impaled the beast in its open mouth, ramming deep into its throat. The wolf folded in midair, but the impact of its leap carried it forward, taking the spear with it as it fell.

Duncan's foot caught on the falling stick and he was thrown to his knees. A wolf was rushing in at him and he jerked up the blade, but even as he did, Daniel reached out with a driving hoof, catching the animal behind its hunched shoulder blades. The wolf went down with a crunch of snapping bones.

Duncan surged to his feet, and as he did he saw Tiny on the ground, locked in battle with one of the beasts, and another charging in, with a raging Conrad standing close beside the dog, club lifted and ready for the charging wolf. And just beyond the embattled dog, Beauty was struggling frantically to tug free of one of the beasts that had caught her by a foreleg, with two other wolves rushing in upon her.

Duncan lunged to Beauty's aid, but he had taken no more than a step or two when a raging fury, brandishing two burning brands, streaked toward the burro's attackers. One of the brands went spinning through the air, turning end for end, and the two charging beasts sheered off.

"Meg!" Duncan shouted. "Meg, for the love of God, watch out!" But she paid him no attention, running like the wind, her ancient body wobbling on her shaky legs that seemed to twinkle with her speed even as she wobbled. She lifted the one remaining brand and brought it down on the wolf that had Beauty by the leg. The wolf yelped and spun away, went whimpering out into the darkness.

From the darkness came again the loud, clear voice speaking in the unknown tongue, and as the words rang across the clearing, all the wolves turned about and ran.

Duncan came to a halt and turned slowly to his left. Daniel stood beside the fire, and a short distance from him Andrew had one foot on a dead wolf to hold it down while he tugged desperately to free the staff rammed deep into its throat.

Conrad and Meg were walking toward the fire, with Tiny trailing, while behind Tiny came the limping Beauty. Here and there lay the bodies of the wolves. One of them, possibly the one that Daniel had struck, was trying to pull itself along with frantically working forelegs, its hind quarters dragging.

As Duncan walked toward the fire, Andrew suddenly screamed, let go of the staff on which he had been tugging, and backed away from the dead wolf, his hands lifted to his face.

"No! No!" he screamed. "No, not that!"

Duncan ran toward him and then stopped short, staring at the dead wolf in shocked amazement and disbelief.

The body of the wolf was slowly changing and as he watched in horror, it became the body of a naked woman, with the hermit's staff still protruding from her mouth.

Beside Duncan, Meg chirped at him in a high and squeaky voice. "I could have told you, but I never had a chance. It happened all too fast."

Conrad stepped past Duncan, grasped the hermit's staff in one hamlike hand, and jerked it free.

The body of the wolf beyond the woman had turned into a man, and out beyond the two of them, the thing with the broken back that had been dragging itself away wailed suddenly in a human voice, a cry of pain and terror.

"I'll take care of him," said Conrad grimly.

"No," said Duncan. "For the moment, leave him be."

"Werewolves," spat Conrad. "They're only good for killing."

"There is something I have to find out," said Duncan. "There were a lot of them. Only a few of them attacked. The others hung back. If they had all come in…"

"Someone called them back," said Conrad.

"No, it wasn't that. Not that alone. There was something else."

"Here," said Conrad, holding out the staff to Andrew.

The hermit shrank away. "No, no," he wailed. "I do not want to touch it. I killed a woman with it."

"Not a woman. A werewolf. Here, take it. Hold fast to it. You'll never have another staff quite like it."

He thrust it out forcefully at Andrew and the hermit took it. He thumped it on the ground.

"I shall always remember," he pleaded.

"Good thing to remember," Conrad said. "A blow struck for our Lord."

Duncan walked out to the edge of the firelight, stood over the wailing man with the broken back, then slowly knelt beside him. The man was old. His arms and legs were thin as straws, his knees and elbows knobs. His ribs showed through his skin. His snow-white hair hung down to curl up at his neck and was plastered with sweat across his forehead. He looked at Duncan with fear and hatred in his shining eyes.

"Tell me," said Duncan, "who spoke out of the dark."

The man's lips pulled back to reveal his yellowed teeth. He snarled and spat.

Duncan reached out to grab him by the shoulder and he flinched away. He opened his mouth and screamed, his head arched high, the cords in his neck standing out like ropes. White, foamy spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth and he screamed and moaned and clawed feebly at the ground to pull himself away. He writhed in agony.

A hand came down and grasped Duncan by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet.

"Here, let me," said Conrad.

His club came down and there was the sickening sound of a crunching skull. The man crumpled and lay still.

Duncan turned to Conrad angrily. "You shouldn't have done that. I told you not to."

"When you kill snakes," said Conrad, "you kill them. You do not coddle them."

"But there was a question."

"You asked the question and you got no answer."

"But he might have answered."

Conrad shook his head. "Not that one. He was too afraid of you." And that was true, thought Duncan. The werewolf had been beside itself with fear. It had screamed and tried to claw itself away. It had writhed in agony.

Conrad touched him on the arm. "Let's go back to the fire. I have to see how Beauty is."

"She was limping. That was all. Meg saved her."

"Yes, I saw," said Conrad.

"How is Tiny?"

"A slit ear. A tooth mark here and there. He'll be all right. Just a little sore."

By the time they got back to the fire Andrew had piled on more wood, and the flames were leaping high. Andrew and Meg were standing side by side. Conrad went off to see about Beauty.

"That was a brave thing you did," Duncan told Meg. "Running out there to help Beauty."

"I had fire. Werewolves are afraid of fire."

She bridled at him. "I suppose you wonder why I helped. My being a witch and all. Well, I'll tell you. A little magic and some mild enchantments, those are all right with me. In my day I've done a lot of that. There is nothing wrong with it. Many times it helps. But I told you I had no real evil and I meant that. Werewolves are evil and I cannot abide them. Mean, downright vicious evil. There's no call for anyone to be that evil."

"There was a pack of them," said Duncan. "A lot of them. I never knew that werewolves ran in packs, although perhaps they do. You were telling me about the camp followers who trailed in the wake of the Harriers. Could that be what accounted for so large a pack?"

"It must be that. They must have come swarming in from all over Britain."

"And you heard the voice?"

She put her arms around herself, hugging tight and shivering.

"You knew the words? You recognized the language?"

"Not the words," she said, "but the language, yes. A word here and there. It's a very ancient tongue."

"How ancient?"

"That I cannot tell you, sir. Not in years or centuries. It goes deep back. Spoken before any human spoke, perhaps before there were such things as humans."

"Primordial," he said. "The words of primordial evil."

"I do not know."

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how she recognized the language, but he did not ask the question. There was no need to distress her further. She had been honest in her answers, he was sure, and that was good enough.

Conrad came back. "Beauty is all right," he said. "Her leg's a little sore. We came out lucky."

The clearing was quiet. The humped bodies of the dead werewolves lay at the edge of the outer darkness.

"Perhaps," said Andrew, "we should bury them."

"You do not bury werewolves," Conrad said. "A stake through the heart, perhaps. Besides, we haven't any shovel."

"We'll do nothing," Duncan said. "We'll leave them where they are."

The chapel stood white in the flickering firelight. Duncan looked at the open door. The firelight did not reach deep enough into the interior to show the reversed crucifix and he was glad of that.

"I'll not sleep a wink this night," said Andrew.

"You had best," said Conrad roughly. "Come morning light, we have a long, hard day ahead. Do you think you can find that trail?"

Andrew shook his head in perplexity. "I am not sure. I seem all turned around. Nothing has looked right."

A wailing scream cut through the night, seeming to come from directly overhead, as if the screamer hung in the darkness over them.

"My God," yelped Andrew. "Not more. Not any more tonight." The scream came again, a moan and whimper in it. It was the sort of sound that squeezed the heart and made the blood run cold.

A calm voice spoke to them from just inside the firelit zone. "You have no reason to fear," it said. "That is only Nan, the banshee."

Duncan spun around to face the one who spoke. For a moment he did not recognize him. A little man with a cap that drooped, a pair of spindly legs, ears that were oversized.

"Snoopy," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Hunting you," said Snoopy. "We've been hunting you for hours. Ever since Ghost told us he had lost track of you."

Ghost came fluttering down and beside him another figure, its darkness in contrast to the white of Ghost.

"It was pure happenstance," said Ghost, "that I ran into them."

"It was much more than happenstance," said Snoopy, "and you wouldn't understand. We have no time to explain."

Ghost floated lower until his white robe swept the ground. Nan, the banshee, settled down, hunched herself along the ground toward the fire. She was repulsive. Her deep-set eyes glittered at them from beneath her shaggy brows. Thick black hair flowed down her back almost to her waist. Her face was thin and hard.

"Faith," she said, "and you were hidden well. It took us long to find you."

"Madam," said Duncan, "we were in no wise hiding. We simply reached here and camped the night."

"And a fine place you picked," said Snoopy, walking up to them. "You know you cannot stay here."

"We intend to," Conrad told him. "We fought off a pack of werewolves. We can handle whatever else comes."

"We have been looking for you, goblin," said Andrew. "Why were you not at the church, where you said you'd be?"

"I've been out spreading word that you'll need some help. And the way you've been fumbling around, you will need all the help that we can give."

"You found little help," Andrew said snappishly. "One beaten-up old banshee."

"I'll have you know, you twerp," said Nan, the banshee, "that I can give you ace and spades and beat you at hands-down."

"There'll be others later on," said Snoopy calmly. "They'll be there when you need them most. And you know you can't stay here. No matter what you say, in your ignorance and arrogance, we have to get you somewhere else."

"We know," said Duncan, "that this is a pagan shrine."

"More than that," Snoopy told him. "Much more than that. A place that was sacred to Evil before there were any pagans who might worship Evil. Here, in the days of the first beginning, gathered beings that would shrivel up your tiny souls were you to catch even the smallest glimpse of them. You desecrate the ground. You befoul the place. They will not suffer that you stay here. The werewolves were the first. There will be others, not so easily beaten off as werewolves."

"But there is the chapel…"

"They suffered the chapel to be built. They watched it being built by arrogant and misunderstanding men, by stupid churchmen who should have known far better. They lurked in the shades and watched it going up and they bided their time and when that time came…"

"You can't frighten us," said Conrad.

"Perhaps we should be frightened," said Duncan. "Perhaps if we had good sense we would be."

"That is right," said Meg. "You should be."

"But you came along with us. You did not protest when we…"

"Where else is an old and crippled witch to go?"

"You could have flown off on your broomstick," said Conrad.

"I never had a broomstick. Nor did any other witch. That is only one of the many stupid stories…"

"We can't move until we get some rest," said Duncan. "Conrad and I could go on, but the witch is feeble and Andrew has walked the livelong day. He is worn out."

"I had the strength to kill a werewolf," the hermit pointed out.

"You mean it, don't you?" Conrad said to Snoopy. "You're not just shoving us around."

"He means it," said Nan, the banshee.

"We could put Andrew up on Daniel," Conrad said. "Let Beauty carry Meg. She weighs no more than a feather. The packs we could carry. Beauty, even with a sore leg, could carry Meg."

"Then," said Snoopy, "let us be about it."

"I plead with you," said Ghost. "Please do. If you stay here you'll join me in death by morning. And you might not have the good fortune that I had to become a ghost."