The Fellowship of the Talisman Read Online Free PDF

realizing it, certain small characteristics that would be essential in determining if it’s genuine or not. We have made copies, two of them, that will be kept at the abbey under lock and key. So if the original should be lost we still will have the text. But that the original should be lost is a catastrophe that bears no thinking on.”
    â€œWhat if Bishop Wise can authenticate the text, but raises a question on the parchment or the ink? Surely he is not also an expert on parchments and on inks.”
    â€œI doubt,” the archbishop said, “that he’ll raise such questions. With his scholarship, he should know beyond all question if it is genuine from an examination of the writing only. Should he, however, raise those questions, then we must seek another scholar. There must be those who know of parchments and of inks.”
    â€œYour Grace,” said Duncan’s father, “you say there have been theories advanced about the Desolated Land, about the motive and the reason. Do you, perhaps, have a favorite theory?”
    â€œIt’s hard to choose among them,” the archbishop told him. “They all are ingenious and some of them are tricky, slippery of logic. The one, of all of them, that makes most sense to me is the suggestion that the Desolated Lands are used for the purpose of renewal—that the evil forces of the world at times may need a resting period in which to rededicate their purpose and enrich themselves, recharging their strength. Like a church retreat, perhaps. So they waste an area, turning it to a place of horror and desolation, which serves as a barrier to protect them against interference while they carry out whatever unholy procedures may be necessary to strengthen them for another five centuries of evil doing. The man who propounded this theory sought to show a weakening of the evil done for some years preceding the harrying of a desolated land, and in a few years after that a great increase in evil. But I doubt he made his point. There are not sufficient data for that kind of study.”
    â€œIf this should be true,” said Duncan, “then our little band, if it trod most carefully and avoided any fuss, should have a good chance to pass through the Desolated Land unnoticed. The forces of Evil, convinced they are protected by the desolation, would not be as alert as they might be under other circumstances, and they also would be busy doing all the things they need to do in this retreat of theirs.”
    â€œYou might be right,” his father said.
    The archbishop had been listening silently to what Duncan and his father had been saying. He sat with his hands folded across his paunch, his eyes half closed, as if he were wrestling with some private thought. The three of them sat quietly for a little time until finally His Grace stirred himself and said, “It seems to me that more study, really serious study, should be made of this great force of Evil that has been loose upon the world for uncounted centuries. We have responded to it, all these centuries, with horror, explaining it by thoughtless superstition. Which is not to say there is no basis for some of the tales we hear and the stories that are told. Some of the tales one hears, of course, are true, in some cases even documented. But many of them are false, the tales of stupid peasants who think them up, I am convinced, to pass off idle hours. Ofttimes, other than their rude horseplay and their fornications, they have little else to amuse themselves. So we are engulfed in all sorts of silly stories. And silly stories do no more than obscure the point. What we should be most concerned with is an understanding of this Evil. We have our spells and enchantments with which to cast out devils; we have our stories of men being changed into howling dogs or worse; we believe volcanoes may be the mouths of Hell; not too long ago we had the story of some silly monks who dug a pit and, descending into it,