“M’lord,” said Conrad.
“Yes, what is it?”
“A delicate matter.”
“There are no delicate matters between you and me. Speak up. Tell me what you were about to.”
“The Horde,” said Conrad, “does not want us to get to Oxenford–well, maybe not actually to Oxenford, maybe they just don’t want us to get anywhere. They’ve tried to block us at every turn. And now perhaps we’re blocked for good. They’ll have no more trouble from us.”
“That’s true. But what’s your point?”
“The Lady Diane.”
“What about the Lady Diane?”
“Could she be in league with them? Is this but a clever trick?”
Duncan flushed in anger, opened his mouth to speak and then held back the words.
Andrew hurriedly said, “I think not. To me it is inconceivable. Twice she aided us in battle. She would not have done this had she been in league with them.”
“I think you probably are right,” said Conrad. “It’s only that we must consider every angle.”
In the silence that followed, Duncan’s mind went back again to his half-formed plan to get the manuscript to Oxenford by some other route. It wouldn’t work, he knew. Diane, without question, could carry it to Standish House, could acquaint his father with what had happened to him and Conrad, but it seemed hardly likely that the manuscript could be carried to Oxenford by sea. His father and the archbishop had given that possibility full consideration and apparently had decided that it would be impossible. It might be that his father would decide to attempt it by land once again, sending out a small army of men-at-arms, but that sort of venture, it seemed to Duncan, would have little chance of success. The Reaver’s band of thirty men or more had been easily wiped out. That his own small group had gotten as far as it had, he was convinced, was due only to the protection afforded by the talisman.
Or, wait a moment, he told himself. If Diane could take the manuscript to Standish House, she could take it just as easily to Oxenford. At Oxenford she could deliver it by hand to Bishop Wise and wait to bring back the word.
But, thinking this, he knew that none of it was possible, knew that he had been doing no more than conjuring up fantasies in a desperate effort to find some solution to his problem.
He could not hand over the manuscript to Diane–nor, perhaps, to any other. He could not give it to someone he could not trust and in this place, other than Conrad, whom could he trust? Diane had lured him and his party into this circle of enchantment. And now she said that she was sorry, had even wept in saying she was sorry. But expressions of sorrow come easily, he told himself, and tears just as easily.
And that was not all. The manuscript had been given into his keeping and it must stay that way. He was the one who had sole responsibility for it; it was a sacred trust he could share with no one else. In his mad groping for some way out of his predicament, he had forgotten, for the moment, the holy vow he implicitly had taken when His Grace had handed him the parchment.
“Another thing,” said Conrad. “Could the demon help us? He might have a trick or two up his sleeve. If we appealed to him, if we were able to offer him the payment of setting him free, if we could…”
“With a demon I’ll not deal,” snapped Andrew. “He is a filthy beast.”
“To me,” said Duncan, “he seems a decent chap.”
“You cannot trust him,” Andrew said. “He would play you false.”
“You said we could not trust Snoopy either,” Conrad reminded him. “Yet if we’d paid attention to Snoopy, we’d not be where we are now. He warned us against the castle. He told us not to go near it.”
“Have it your own way,” whined Andrew, “but leave me out of it. I’ll have no traffic with a demon out of Hell.”
“He might have a way to help us.”
“If he did, there’d be a price attached. Mark my word, there’d be a price to pay.”
“I’d be prepared to pay the price,” said Conrad.
“Not the kind he’d ask,” said Andrew.
It was no good, Duncan told himself. Scratch, decent chap though he might be–something of which they could not be certain–would not be able to help them. Nor could anyone. Diane, if she had been able, would have opened a path for them. And if she were unable, so would be all the others of them. An enchantment of this sort, he told himself, if it were to have any value, would have to be foolproof and tamperproof.
Despite all his daydreaming, all his wishful thinking, the matter now was closed, the venture cancelled out. They could not leave the castle, the manuscript would not get to Oxenford, the one last hope of mankind, as His Grace had termed it, now had flickered out.
He rose heavily to his feet and started up the stairway.
“Where are you going, m’lord?” Conrad asked.
Duncan didn’t answer him, for there was no answer. He had no idea where he might be going or what might be his purpose. He had no thought at all. It was as if his mind had been wiped clean of every thought he had. The only thing he knew was that somehow he must get away, although he did not know from what. And even as he thought this, he knew that he would be unable to get away from anything.
He kept on plodding up the stairs.
He had almost reached the entrance when he heard the scream–a ululating wail laden with an unsupportable terror, the kind of half screech, half howl a condemned soul might utter, interspersed with squeals of stricken horror. The sound nailed him to the spot, petrified and stupefied, terror-stricken by the horror of it.
The screaming was coming from somewhere inside the castle, and the first thought he had was of Diane. But it was not Diane, he realized; the sound was too full-throated, too deep to be made by a woman. Cuthbert, he told himself–it had to be the wizard.
With a superhuman effort he broke the chain of terror that held him in place, forced his legs to move, and went leaping up the stairs. As he burst through the entrance into the hall, he saw that it was Cuthbert. The old man was running along the balcony above the hall. He wore the long white nightgown with ruffles at the throat and wrists, the flaming red nightcap askew upon his head. His hands were lifted high, as if raised in horror, and his face was so twisted it seemed scarcely human. From his foam-flecked, frothing lips issued a stream of screams and squeals, and then, in mid-scream, he went over the balustrade that closed in the balcony and spun in the air, cartwheeling through the emptiness, his scream becoming one loud, persistent screech that did not end until he hit the floor. Then the scream cut off and he lay, a huddled, crumpled figure all in white except for the red nightcap.
Duncan rushed forward, and out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Diane, still clad in her filmy gown of green, running down one of the staircases from the balcony.
He reached Cuthbert and went to his knees beside him, reaching out his hands to lift the body, but stopping when he saw the rivulet of blood that came from beneath the shattered head to run along the polished flagstones. Then, more slowly, he reached out again and turned the body, saw what had happened to the head and face and then let it roll back again to its original position.
Diane was racing toward him and, getting to his feet, he leaped to intercept her. He caught her in his arms and held her while she beat at him with her fists.
“Don’t look,” he told her sharply. “You don’t want to look.”
“But Cuthbert…”
“He is dead,” said Duncan.
Above him he heard a creaking, and looking up, he saw that a part of the balcony balustrade was swaying. Even as he watched it came crashing down. Shards of shattered stone skittered across the floor, and from somewhere within the castle’s bowels came a groaning sound. Then one of the pillars that stood along the wall of the reception hall tieing the hall and balcony together slowly, gracefully peeled itself off the wall and toppled, not with a rush, but settling slowly, describing a polished arc, as if it were tired and lying down to rest. It struck the floor with violence despite its graceful fall and came apart, the broken debris flying out to roll across the flagstones.
“Let’s get out of here,” yelled Conrad. “The whole damn place is beginning to fall down.”