The Fellowship of the Talisman

23

As Duncan crossed the reception hail, Scratch, the demon, perched upon his pedestal, called out to him.

"Are you in a hurry, sire?" he asked. "Would you, perhaps, have a little time to spare? If so, it would be merciful of you to halt a while and chat. Despite all this magnificence of stone and fancy scrollwork, despite the elevated and exalted throne they have provided for me, there are times when the hours hang heavy on my hands."

Duncan altered his course and walked toward Scratch's column. "I have not a thing to do," he said. "Mistress Diane is gone to see how the wizard fares and my companions apparently have pursuits of their own. I would treasure a little time with you."

"Now, that is fine," the demon said. "Two men with the selfsame thought, a way in which to pleasantly while away some time. But there's no need for you to stand there, getting a crick in your neck from staring up at me. If you'd only help me down, we could sit on that stone bench a step or two away. My chain is long enough for me to reach it handily and with some to spare."

Duncan moved closer to the column and reached up his hands. The demon leaned forward and Duncan grasped him about the waist and helped him down.

"Except for this clubfoot of mine, which additionally is weighted down by the chain, I could get down quite easily myself," said Scratch. "In fact, I often do, but not in a manner that you could call easily." He held out his arthritis-crippled hands. "And these don't help, either."

They walked to the bench and sat down, side by side. Scratch lifted his clubhoof and crossed his knees. He jiggled the hoof up and down and the chain clanked.

"I was explaining to you the other day," he said, "that my name is Scratch-formerly Young Scratch, now simply Scratch, but never Old Scratch, for that is the vulgar designation of His Nibs, who runs the Infernal Operation. Since the name has been given me, I suppose I must abide by it, but I have never liked it. It is the kind of name one might give a dog. Why, even milady's griffin is given the honest name of Hubert, which is a far better name than Scratch. Through the years I have squatted on my column and have thought, among many other things, of a name that I'd enjoy bearing. A more suitable name, with more dignity and a more euphonious sound. I have paraded hundreds of names through my mind, taking my time, for I have all the time there is, weighing each name as I think of it, twisting and turning it in my mind, so I can get a critical look at it from every angle, rolling it around in my mouth to get the sound and feel of it. And after all these years and all the examination, I think I have finally found a name that would fit me well and that I'd be proud to have. I'll wager you cannot guess what that name might be."

"I have no faintest idea," said Duncan. "How could I have?"

"It is Walter," said Scratch triumphantly. "It is a splendid name. Do you not think it is? It has a full round sound to it. It is a name that is complete of itself and not a bobtailed name. Although I am aware it could be shortened to Walt. If I had such a name I should frown upon its shortening. It is not a fancy name. It has no flair to it. It is a solid name, an honest name, fashioned to fit a solid and an honest man."

"So that is how you spend your time," said Duncan. "Thinking up a new name for yourself. I suppose it is as good a device as any to make the time go by."

"It is only one of many things I do," said Scratch. "I do a lot of imagining. I imagine how it might have been for me had events gone differently. If I had worked out as an apprentice demon, if I could have cut the mustard, by now I would be a senior demon or, just possibly, a junior devil. I would be much larger than I am now, although maybe there would not have been that much change in size. I am a runt, you know; I have always been a runt. It may be that therein lies my trouble. Perhaps a runt is foreordained to failure, perhaps a runt never can make good. But even when I know this, I still can keep on imagining. I can envision myself as a senior demon or a junior devil, with a big paunch of a belly and hair upon my chest and a very dirty laugh. That's one thing I never was able to achieve, that very nasty laugh that can chill a human's blood and shrivel up his soul."

"You seem to me," said Duncan, "to be quite philosophical about your plight. You have not grown bitter. Many lesser ones would have grown bitter. And you do not whine for pity."

"What would be accomplished," asked Scratch, "should I rant or rave or whine? No one would love me more; in fact, they'd love me less. No one loves a bellyacher. Although I do not know why I talk of love, for there's no one who loves me. Who could love a demon? There are those who may feel some small pity of me, but pity is not love. What they mostly do is laugh at me-at my twisted tail, at my clubhoof, at my crumpled horn. And laughter, my lord, is very hard to take. If they'd only shrink from me in horror, or even in disgust, I'd be better satisfied. I could live with that."

"I have not laughed at you," said Duncan, "nor have I felt overwhelming pity for you. But I'll not claim I love you."

"That is not expected," said Scratch. "I would have some suspicion of a human who professed love for me. I then would look for motive."

"And well you might," said Duncan, "but since I have proclaimed no love of you and thus have not attempted to put you in my debt, could I ask an honest question?"

"I would be pleased to have you."

"Then what can you tell me about the Horde of Evil? I would imagine that in this castle, from wizard talk, you may have heard some mention of it."

"That I have. What is it you would know? Although it occurs to me you may know something of it personally. I have been informed that you and your band stood them off not too long ago."

"Only a small party of them, mostly the hairless ones, although there were others. I don't know how many of them or how many kinds."

"The hairless ones," said Scratch, "if I correctly catch the meaning of your term, are the slogging infantry, the guards, the skirmishers who do the initial dirty work. In a certain sense they are not true evil beings, not really of the Horde. All they have is bone and muscle. They have little magic in them, perhaps none at all."

"And the rest of them? I talked with one who'd seen these others. Or told me that he had. He talked of imps and demons and I doubt that he is right. He was only using names he knew, generic names for evil. In our encounter outside the wall, I killed one of these others and Tiny killed another and they were not imps or demons. I know not what they were."

"You're quite right," said Scratch. "They are neither imps nor demons. Imps and demons are of this world and these other ones are not. You know, of course, that the Horde came from the stars."

"So I've been told," said Duncan.

"They are the spawn of other places, other worlds, which I suspect are not like our world. So it only stands to reason that the Evil they spawned is unlike the evil of the Earth. They come in inconceivable shapes and forms. The very alienness of them is sufficient to clot one's lifeblood. Their habits and their motives and their modes of operation, I presume, as well, would not conform to the habits, the motives and the operations of an evil thing of Earth. In going up against them you are encountering a sort of creature you can never have imagined, perhaps could not possibly imagine."

"Someone told me," Duncan said, "that they are no horde at all; they really are a swarm. What could be meant by that?"

"I do not really know," said Scratch. "I have, you must understand, no real knowledge of them. It's only what I've heard."

"I realize that. But about a swarm. Prior to being told that they were more like a swarm than horde, I had talked with a venerable bee master and he talked of swarming bees. In this wise, could there be some connection?"

"There is one thing," said Scratch, "although it was a short conversation only that I chanced to overhear. It might, just possibly, bear on this swarming matter."

"Please go on," said Duncan. "Tell me what it was."

"At those times," said Scratch, "when the Horde is in the process of devastating an area, in the way it has devastated northern Britain, the members of the Horde at times are prone to come together, to form a sort of living mass. Perhaps like unto a swarm of bees. The ones who talked of this, having heard of it from a few widely separated and isolated observations, were very puzzled by the reported action. At other times, it appears, the individual members of the Horde, when there is no devastation going on, seem to work alone or in small parties, only a few of them together. But when they are about a devastation, they do collect, or so observers say, into a massive swarm…"

"Now, wait a minute," Duncan said. "I think there might be a clue to that. A learned man told me, not long ago, that they devastated an area to make themselves secure so they can engage in a rejuvenation process, a retreat of sorts, he said, as fathers of the church sometimes hold retreats. Do you suppose…"

"You know," said Scratch excitedly, "you may have something there. I have never heard of their rejuvenation rites. But that could well be it. A coming together of the entire community of Evil, a close coming together, a personal contact, one to one, and from that contact they might gain an unknown strength, a renewing of themselves. What do you think? It sounds reasonable to me."

"That had been my thought. I'm glad you share it with me."

"That might explain the swarming."

"I think it could. Although there are so many factors, so many things of which we have no understanding and perhaps never will."

"That is true," said Scratch, "but it's a good hypothesis. One that could be worked on. You talked with Cuthbert. What had he to say of it?"

"We did not talk about the swarming. At the time I did not know of it and if he did, he did not mention it. I brought up the rejuvenation theory, but he seemed to think little of it. He said the Horde was frightened of something, probably was getting together to move against it, but for some reason had become confused. Tell me something, Scratch. If you were forced to take sides in this matter, if there were no way in which you could avoid taking sides, which side would you choose?"

The demon jiggled his hoof up and down and the chain clanked. "This may sound strange to you," he said, "but if forced to take a stand I'd stand in with you humans. My heritage may be evil, but it's a human evil, or at least an earthly evil. I could not stomach associating with an alien evil. I'd not know them and they'd not know me and I'd be uncomfortable with them. Evil may be evil, but there are various kinds of it and they can't always come together."

Steps sounded on the stairs coming down from the balcony into the reception hail, and Duncan looked around. Still dressed in her green gown, Diane seemed to be floating down the stairs. Only the tapping of her sandals betrayed her walking.

Duncan got off the bench and Scratch also clambered off to stand stiffly beside him.

"Scratch," asked Diane, "what are you doing off your pillar?"

"Milady," Duncan told her, "I asked him to come down and sit with me. It was more comfortable for me. That way I did not need to stand, craning up my head to look at him."

"Has he been pestering you?"

"Not at all," said Duncan. "We've had a pleasant talk."

"I suppose," said Scratch, "I'd best get up again."

"Wait a second," Duncan said, "and I'll lend you a hand." He reached down and hoisted the demon so he could catch hold with his crippled hands and scramble back atop the pillar.

"It was good talking with you," Duncan said. "Thanks for giving me your time."

"That is gracious of you, my lord. We will talk again?"

"Most assuredly," said Duncan.

The demon squatted atop the pillar and Duncan turned back to Diane. She was standing in the entrance waiting for him.

"I had thought," she said, "we might take a turn around the grounds. I'd like to show them to you."

"I'd be delighted," said Duncan. "It is kind of you."

He offered her his arm and they went down the stairs together.

"How is Cuthbert feeling?" Duncan asked.

She shook her head. "Not as well as yesterday. I am worried for him. He seems so irrational. He's asleep now. I waited to come down until he was asleep."

"Could my visit with him…"

"Not at all," she said. "His ailment grows upon him. It progresses day by day. Occasionally he has a good day, but not too often now. Apparently he has not been himself since I left to go in search of Wulfert. I suppose I should not have left him, but he said he'd be all right, that he could get along without me."

"You have great love of him?"

"You must remember, he has been a father to me. Since the time I was a babe. The two of us are family."

They reached the bottom of the stairs and now turned to the left to follow a path that led to the back of the castle park. The lawn ran down to just short of the river, fenced in by the ring of standing stones.

"You think, undoubtedly," she said, "that I am harsh with Scratch."

"It seems to me you might have been, a little. Certainly he has a right to come down off his pillar and sit upon a bench."

"But he pesters everyone," she said. "It is seldom now that we have visitors, but in the olden days there were many who came to the castle, and he always pestered them, wanting to pass the time of day with them, hanging onto them as long as possible to engage them in his silly jabber. Cuthbert felt, and I think the others did as well, that he was an embarrassment."

"I can see how that might be," said Duncan, "but he really is all right. I'm not an authority on demons, naturally, so I can't…"

"Duncan."

"Yes?"

"Let's stop all this foolish chatter. There's something that I have to tell you, and if I don't tell it to you now, I'll never have the strength to."

She had halted at the bending of the path, opposite a large clump of birch and pine. He swung about to confront her and saw that her face was drawn and white.

"There can't anything be that bad," he said, startled by the look of her.

"Yes, there can be," she told him tightly. "You remember just an hour or so ago you said that you must be leaving soon, and I said there was no hurry, that you should stay a while and rest."

"Yes, I remember that."

"I should have told you then. But I couldn't tell you. I simply couldn't say the words. I had to leave to try to find the courage."

He started to speak, but she held up a hand to stop him.

"I can't wait," she said. "There can be no further talk. I must tell you now. Duncan, it is this: you can't leave. You can never leave this castle."

He stood stupid in the path, the words not sinking in, refusing to sink in.

"But that can't be," he said. "I don't…"

"I can't say it any plainer. There's no way for you to leave. No one can help you leave. It's a part of the enchantment. There's no way to break it…"

"But you were just telling me you had visitors. And you, yourself…"

"It takes magic," she told him. "Your personal magic, not someone else's magic. It takes an arcane knowledge that one holds oneself. The visitors have had that kind of knowledge, that kind of magic. Because of that, they could go where no others could. I have some of that knowledge myself, also a special dispensation…"

"You mean because none of us has that knowledge…" She nodded, tears in her eyes.

"And you can't help us? The wizard can't help us?"

"No one can help. The ability must be yours."

Suddenly anger flared within him, blinding him.

"Goddamn it, then," he yelled, "why did you tell us to run for the castle? You knew what would happen. You knew we would be trapped. You knew…"

He stopped in mid-sentence, for he doubted she was hearing him. She was weeping openly, head bowed, arms hanging at her side. Just standing there, all alone, and weeping.

She raised a tearstained face to look at him, cringing away from him.

"You would have been killed," she said. "We broke the Harrier line, but they'd have been back again. It was only a momentary battle lull. They'd have returned and hunted you down, like wild animals."

She reached out for him. "You understand?" she cried. "Please do understand!"

She took a step toward him and he put his arms around her, drawing her close against him, holding her tightly. She bowed her head against him, weeping convulsively, her body shaking with the sobs.

Her muffled voice said, "I lay awake last night, thinking of it. Wondering how I could have done it, how I'd ever tell you. I thought perhaps I could ask Cuthbert to tell you. But that wouldn't have been right. I was the one who did it, I should be the one to tell you. And now I have-and now I have…"