And yet Duncan did not like it. He felt, somehow, unclean. Unworthy and unclean, fouled with deceit and shiftiness, skulduggery and trickery.
What was right? As he thought of it, the line between right and wrong became blurred and smeared, and it never had been that way before with him. He had always known, instinctively, without being told, what was right and what was wrong. There had been no blurring, there had been no smear. But his prior decisions in this regard, he realized, had always dealt with simple considerations in which there had been no complicating factor. But here there was a complicating factor that, in no way, he could quite fit into place.
He sat on the bottom step of the great stone stairway that led up to the castle’s entrance. In front of him swept the verdant greenness that ran from where he sat to the edge of the sweeping circle of standing stones ringing in the castle’s park. Through the park ran curving paths and walkways paved with bricks. Spotted about the smoothness of the lawn were stone benches, pools, and spouting fountains, rose-covered bowers, flowering gardens, and clumps of shrubs and trees set tastefully in the great green expanse of grass.
It was a beautiful place, he thought–not a place of natural beauty, but a place of artificial beauty, made so, not perhaps by man, as would be the case in other castle parks and gardens, but by the wizardry of a congress of men skilled in bringing about events that stood beyond the natural.
There was in it a peace and restfulness that he would not have thought possible in the domain of wizardry. And yet, he told himself, it would have been wrong for him to think so, for wizards were not necessarily evil men, although there had been some, if history told true, who had turned to evil. The temptation to evil, he realized, would always have been present among men who held such large-scale powers as they, but that did not mean evil was inherent in them; perhaps only a small fraction of them had ever turned to evil. Their powers were great because of the knowledge that they held and this might be, he told himself, why wizards were in such bad repute. The general populace, the great mass of common men, viewed all great power and all extensive knowledge with suspicion; they viewed with suspicion anything they could not understand, and the knowledge held by wizards was unimaginably beyond the understanding of the rest of mankind.
Down near the standing stones, Conrad and Tiny were playing. Conrad was throwing a stick for Tiny, and Tiny, beside himself with joy, for there were not often times when he could play, went racing after the stick when Conrad threw it, bringing it back in his mouth, gamboling and frisking in an ecstasy of fun that somehow did not fit in with the disposition of a war dog. To one side stood Daniel and Beauty, watching the play. Daniel, it seemed to Duncan, was looking on disdainfully, as if he recognized that such behavior was beneath Tiny’s dignity. Beauty, however, did not seem to mind. At times she cropped a mouthful of grass, but for the most part watched with uncommon interest. Probably, Duncan thought, if Conrad were to throw a stick for her, she would run and fetch it, too.
A short distance from Daniel and Beauty, Hubert, Diane’s griffin, was lying on the lawn, the eagle head held high, the long whip of a tail curled halfway around his body as a cat would curl its tall when lying down, the jutting, rounded lion hips tawny against the greenness of the grass.
Behind him, Duncan heard a faint sound and turned his head. Diane was coming down the steps, but a different Diane. She was clothed in a filmy, clinging gown that reached from neck to toes, belted at the waist. Leaf green it was, the pale yellow-green of the first spring leaves of the willow tree. Her flame-colored hair almost shouted against the pale softness of the fabric.
Duncan came swiftly to his feet. “Milady,” he said, “you are beautiful. Beautiful and charming.”
She laughed lightly at him. “I thank you, sir. Who, I ask you, could be beautiful in buckskins?”
“Even then,” he said, “you had a charm about you. But this–I cannot tell you.”
“It’s not often,” she said, “that I can dress like this, or have occasion to. But with a house of guests, what other could I do?”
She sat down upon a step and he sat beside her.
“I was watching Conrad and Tiny at their play,” he said.
“They are a pair,” she said.
“You have known them long?”
“Conrad and I since we were boys,” he told her. “We were inseparable. And Tiny since he was a pup.”
“Meg is in the kitchen,” she said, “cooking up a mess of sauerkraut and pig knuckles. She says it has been years since she has had her fill of such a dish. I wonder, do you like it?”
“Exceedingly,” said Duncan. “And what of the hermit? I’ve not seen him all the day.”
“He’s wandering,” said Diane. “All about the grounds. He stands, leaning on his staff, staring off at nothing. Your hermit is a troubled man.”
“A befuddled man,” said Duncan. “Unsure of himself. Torn by many questions. He cannot quite determine the condition of his soul. He tried for long, by various means, to be a holy man, and now he has become a soldier of the Lord and it’s a profession he’s uneasy at.”
“Poor man,” she said. “He has within himself so much good and no way to express it. And Cuthbert? How did you like Cuthbert?”
“Impressive,” Duncan said. “Although, at times, difficult to understand. Difficult to follow.”
“He’s senile,” said Diane.
Duncan shot a quick astonished glance at her. “You are sure of that?” he asked.
“Well, aren’t you?” she asked, in turn. “A brilliant mind, sharp and clever, but now dulled by time and sickness. He cannot follow up his thoughts. At times he’s irrational. I watch him closely, lest he hurt himself.”
“He did seem to have some trouble.”
“The last of a long line,” she said, “that persisted over hundreds of years. Now all are gone except for Cuthbert. They tried to keep the congress going, bringing in young apprentices, but it never worked. There are few outstanding wizards any more. It takes a special kind of man to be a wizard. A capacity to absorb vast amounts of arcane knowledge and to work with it. Perhaps something more than that. An instinct for wizardry, perhaps. A distinctive turn of mind. There may be few people in the world today who have that turn of mind.”
“How about yourself?”
She shook her head. “Women seldom can accomplish wizardry. That turn of mind, perhaps. Not the kind of mind that a woman has. It may have to be a man’s mind. The mind of the male animal may be shaped and pointed in a slightly different direction than a woman’s mind. I tried, of course, and they let me try, for while they were forced to banish Wulfert, they held a high respect for him, even in his banishment. He was the most accomplished wizard of them all. And while I could grasp some of the concepts, could perform certain little magics, put together some of the more simple of the manipulations, I was not cut out for wizardry. They did not tell me this. In time to come they would have had to tell me, but I did not force them to. I realized it myself, that I could never be anything other than a poor apprentice wizard. And there’s no room in the world for inefficient apprentices.”
“But you are a resident of the wizards’ castle.”
“A courtesy,” she said. “A sincere and heartfelt courtesy. Because I have Wulfert’s blood in me. When my parents died of a plague that swept the countryside, Cuthbert left the castle for the first time in his life, for the only time, for he has not left it since, and claimed me as a descendant of his great, good friend who by that time, I now know, had long since been dead. The last of the wizards raised me here and because I loved them I tried to learn their skills, but couldn’t. All this I tell you about Cuthbert coming to get me, I’ve been told, for I was then too young to remember it. Not only did they raise me here and care for me, but they gave me as well old Hubert, who was Wulfert’s griffin, left behind when my great-grandfather had to leave this place, for he could not take a griffin with him.”
“The day will come when Cuthbert will die,” said Duncan gently. “What about you then? Will you continue to stay on?”