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    Where the Evil Dwells
    Where the Evil Dwells
    Where the Evil Dwells
    Ebook384 pages6 hours

    Where the Evil Dwells

    By Clifford D. Simak

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    The renowned Science Fiction Grand Master makes a foray into fantasy, with this tale of perilous adventure in a land of trolls, wizards, and terrifying malevolence.

    In an alternate Europe where the Roman Empire never fell, the expansive Empty Lands are inhabited by forces known collectively as the Evil. Yet Charles Harcourt is honor-bound to venture into that dangerous area to find his long-lost fianceé. He is joined on his trek by an abbot who hopes to locate a crystal prism that hold the soul of a saint; the non-human Knurly Man, who craves release from his pitiful existence; and the beautiful Yolanda, who seeks the answer to a secret mystery.

    But their arrival and their purpose had been foretold. The denizens of the Empty Lands are girding for war. And beyond the Evil lurk ancient dark powers waiting patiently for the humans whose souls will set them free.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateNov 29, 2022
    ISBN9781504079754
    Where the Evil Dwells
    Author

    Clifford D. Simak

    During his fifty-five-year career, CLIFFORD D. SIMAK produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time. Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

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    Reviews for Where the Evil Dwells

    3/5

    51 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Fantasy is clearly not Simak's best genre, but this is an interesting diversion. A bit of alternate history, a bit of sword and sorcery, and a quest that might not be a good idea. I like the little twists -- people aren't quite what they seem, the evil is more out of place than really evil, and the goals, when attained, have a different worth than expected.
    • 3/5
      Interesting read from one of the Old Masters.
    • 2/5
      A quest-fantasy story where a group of people in Medieval Europe go into a mystical land where magical creatures and danger abound. It is a very typical fantasy story that is not well written. The dialogue is poor and the plot and characters are not interesting. The plot is straight-forward. Evil is just evil. And the religious aspects are more annoying then plot moving or thought provoking.
    • 2/5
      A great opening line describing a dragon's passage as being like a dishrag in flight is followed by several chapters of the worst "as you know, Bob" info dumps I've ever seen. Simak didn't venture into fantasy often, and this late-career book indicates he was right the first time. I was surprised that he didn't apply any kind of SF angle to this standard quest tale. He simply adds all the classic European fairy tale creatures you've ever heard of into a potted alternate history where the Roman Empire didn't fall. After those awful info-dumps, the book settles into a passable adventure story. Early on there are hints of both Lovecraft and of Hodgson's The Night Land, but those fade away. Things come to an end and that's about it. Not recommended.
    • 2/5
      I kept expecting there would be some "aha!" moment when a cleverly constructed back story would click into place and suddenly this book would make sense. But alas no such moment ever came. Not what I expected from this author.
    • 2/5
      Very poor. Especially from such an accomplished author as Simak. He's muc better known for his SciFi stuff, and this is what he should have stayed with. This book is formulaic at best, tending towards dull the rest of the time. The sheer impressive inventivness of his SF books is just completly lacking in here, and there is no redeeming characters to empathise with either.The plot, such as it is, is straightforward. Civilisied lands - the romans to the south and the barbarians to the eas and north, surround a patch of Empty Lands, inhabited by "Evil". A traveller returns informing a noble son and his Abbot, that a great religious treasure may be found not to far inside. A party containing these momentus heros sets off to find it. They have a few skirimishes with Evil - trolls Ogres, dragons, unicorns, sprites and like, before arriving at the centre where all is reaveled to them.The creatures are non-descript and weak beyond belief, the heros suffer no ills and everything goes smoothly. Some hint of mystery is created around various characters interrelationships, but its all fairly guessable and trivial. The abbot is annoying. the lead hero is very badly written especially the changes in tense from his Surname only to, he, I or charles within a paragraph. Worth avoiding, stay with his much better and cleverer SF.
    • 4/5
      This is sort of an odd fantasy novel. The plot isn't overly complicated, basically you have 4 companions confronting Evil. The characters are more archetypes than they are people, but that was intentional. To me, this resembles the fantasy books of Andre Norton or Gordon R. Dickson - sort of campy, very simple plot, but still effective. It reads more like a game world novel than a regular fantasy novel, but even years later I remember reading this book several times and enjoying it every time.

    Book preview

    Where the Evil Dwells - Clifford D. Simak

    One

    Harcourt saw the dragon while he was riding home from the morning’s hunt. It was flying down the river, a flapping dishcloth of a thing, its snakelike neck stretched out, as if the head and neck were striving mightily to haul the heavy body through the air. The long, twisting tail trailed along behind.

    He pointed it out to the Knurly Man, who was riding beside him, leading a third horse that was loaded with the hart and the boar brought down earlier in the day.

    The first dragon of the year, Harcourt said.

    We seldom see them now, said the Knurly Man. There are not many of them left.

    That was right, Harcourt thought. There were not many of them left this side of the river. Most of them, over the years, had moved to the north. There, it was generally believed, they were working with the Evil, acting as scouts to spy out the movements of the cloud of barbarians who were hovering hungrily on the fringes of the Empty Land.

    There was, at one time, a rookery of dragons just up the river, Harcourt said. There may be a few of them still there.

    The Knurly Man chuckled. That was where you and Hugh tried to catch the dragon.

    It was only a baby dragon, Harcourt said.

    Baby or full-grown, said the Knurly Man, a dragon is nothing to be fooled around with. I guess you found that out. Where might Hugh be now?

    I’m not sure, said Harcourt. Guy may know. The last I heard, he was somewhere in the wilds of Macedonia. The factor of a trading post. We’ll drop the hart off at the abbey. The boar is all we need. Those little, scurrying monks of Guy’s seldom get a chance at honest meat. Guy does, of course. I think he visits the castle as often as he does because of the table we set rather than the company he finds. I’ll ask him what he hears of Hugh.

    Pompous as he may be, said the Knurly Man, I like the Abbot Guy.

    To me, said Harcourt, he is an old and valued friend. He and Hugh are brothers, and I can’t count the times, in early years, when he extricated Hugh and me out of the scrapes we were always falling into. I used to think it was because he was Hugh’s older brother, but now I know that he would have done the same for me if I had been in a scrape alone.

    They came out of the woodland into plowland, green with the springing of the wheat, following a narrow cart track that ran between two fields. A lark went sailing up from the wheat, arrowing high into the sky, trailing behind it the trilling of its song.

    Straight ahead, but still some distance off, could be seen the two round towers of the castle. It wasn’t much of a castle, Harcourt reminded himself—not one of the fancy structures that had been built by lords of great wealth in centuries past. But it was home to him and it was all that a castle should be. Seven years ago, it had stood off attack when the Evil came swarming across the river to strike the abbey and the castle. They had sacked the abbey and, for three days and nights, had mounted an assault against the castle. The price, however, had been made too high for them, and finally they had pulled back and retreated across the river to the Empty Land. Harcourt had been a young man then, and he remembered, thinking back, how the castle’s men had stood upon the wall and cheered as the Evil had broken off the siege.

    To the right, at the head of a ravine that ran down to the river, rose the soaring spires of the abbey. Rising ground hid the rest of the structure, with only the spires thrusting up above the heavy growth of trees that covered the ravine and the river hills.

    Your grandfather was saying just the other day, the Knurly Man said, that your Uncle Raoul had been gone too long. He said it as if he never expected to see him again. This last long absence has taken too much out of the old man. He worries a lot about that wandering son of his.

    I know he does, said Harcourt. Uncle Raoul left shortly after the raid.

    I told your grandfather he would be back. One of these days, I told him, he’ll come walking in. I wish, though, that I could be sure of that.

    In this world, said Harcourt, you can’t be sure of anything.

    From a distance, the twin spires of the abbey, in all their airy delicacy, had given the hint of a soaring structure of great majesty. Close up, that impression vanished. The spires retained their fragile beauty, but the supporting structure, while adequately solid, showed the signs of age and careless maintenance. The soot of wood fires, the verdigris of weathering copper, the soggy juices of fallen leaves, lodged in a hundred nooks and crannies and never cleared away, colored the masonry with unsightly stains and blotches. Here and there the very stones themselves were chipped by ice and sun. The entire building had a ramshackle look about it.

    In the courtyard chickens ran about, clucking and scratching. A bedraggled peacock strutted ridiculously, fanning out a tail from which half the plumes were missing. Ducks waddled companionably and geese ran hissing. A half-grown porker, twirling its tail energetically, rooted with determination at a clump of weeds, seeking to uproot them.

    The approach of Harcourt and the Knurly Man had been noticed. Monks tumbled out from everywhere and ran toward them from all directions. One of the monks seized the bridle of Harcourt’s mount, and another moved toward the Knurly Man.

    No need, said the Knurly Man. I’ll not be staying. I’ll take the hart around to the kitchen, then continue to the castle. We’ll want the boar for supper, and it will take some time to cook him.

    The monk holding Harcourt’s horse said, A bait of oats for the animal and a drink of water.

    That will be fine, said Harcourt. I thank you for your courtesy.

    He dismounted, and the monk led the horse away.

    Hurrying around the corner of the abbey came Abbot Guy, a massive man who towered above the others. A black brush of beard offset the nakedness of his tonsured poll. Clear, blue, sparkling eyes looked out of the beard as if from ambush. His cassock was hitched up at the belt. Bare legs and feet showed beneath its hem. The feet, Harcourt saw, were unwashed, although why he noted that he did not know. Few people, even churchmen, paid much heed to soap and water.

    Charles, the abbot shouted, it’s good to see you.

    Harcourt shook his outstretched hand. Abbot, you haven’t been to see us for a week. You know the castle is yours whenever you may come.

    Details, the abbot said in his booming voice. Always and forever, details. If it’s not one thing, then it’s another. Always something to steal away one’s time. These dolts of mine must be told everything they do—not only what to do, but how to do it and sometimes even why. Once at it, they do it willingly enough, but they must be told. I lead them by their hands, I wipe their noses for them, every one of them.

    The watching monks grinned in tolerant good humor.

    Well, come with me, said the abbot. We’ll find a place where we can sit and tell one another bawdy tales, without all these people listening, endangering their souls by hearing all our dirty talk. Not to mention shirking the chores to which they have been set. I see you brought some venison.

    The castle needed fresh meat, and I was not busy for the day.

    Yes, I know. I know how it goes. Salted beef and pickled pork, after a time, grow weary to the palate. We have some fresh garden greens we’ll send home with you.

    He grabbed Harcourt by the arm, and the two of them walked around the corner of the abbey, heading for the abbot’s tiny house. They ended up in a small room, its walls covered by faded, tattered tapestries.

    That chair over there, said the abbot. The special chair for old friends. Also for distinguished guests, of which there have been none for years. We live, Charles, in a forgotten corner of the Empire. No one ever comes, not even passing through.

    He started rummaging in a closet. There is a special bottle, he said. I am sure there is. I hid it away. Now if I can only find it.

    He found it and came back with it and two glasses. He handed one of the glasses to Harcourt and sat down in another chair, legs spraddled, working on the cork.

    Your wheat is growing well, said Harcourt. We rode through the field.

    So I’m told, the abbot said. I have not been out to see it. It is this job I have.

    It’s more than a job, Harcourt told him. It is an honorable and holy calling, and you are doing well with it.

    If that should be the case, said the Abbot Guy, wouldn’t you think the Church would confirm me in my post? Six years an acting abbot. Not an abbot yet. I tell you, Charles, the way that things are going, I may never be an abbot.

    These are parlous times, Harcourt reminded him. All is haphazard and uncertain. The barbarians from Hither Asia still pose an ever-present threat. The Evil still stands across the river. There may be, as well, other circumstances of which we are not aware.

    And we are the ones, the abbot said, who, out here on the frontier, hold the shield for both the Church and the Empire. Occasionally, you would think, they should give some thought to us. Rome should pay us some attention.

    The Empire has fallen on bad times, said Harcourt. There have been bad times before. But Rome persists. Since the founding of the Republic, if we can trust our history, it has persisted for more than two thousand years. It has its times of glory, it has its periods of weakness. There are times it huddles, as it huddles now, its frontiers pulled back, its economy crumbling, its foreign policy fumbling …

    I have no quarrel with that, the abbot said. Rome has been weak before; there was a time or two it tottered; but, as you say, it continues to persist. It has staying power. I, with you, trust that it will be great and strong again, and the Church strong with it. My worry is that its recovery will take too long a time. Will it and the Church gain strength soon enough for me to be confirmed in my abbacy, the Empire strong enough to provide the legions to protect this and other frontiers? Someday, some century, a great statesman will arise, as great leaders have come to turn the tide before …

    It is not always great leaders, Harcourt told him. Sometimes it is sheer circumstance. In the fourth century, the Empire came very near to splitting into east and west. While our historians do not all agree, it seems to me quite evident that the Evil saved the Empire then. The Evil had been there before, of course. Its presence was well known, but up until that time it had been a nuisance only, scarcely more than that. It became more than a nuisance when it attacked in force, without notice, all along the borders, reacting to the pressure of the barbarian hordes that forced it east and south. To turn back the invasion of the Evil called for the full capability of the Empire. There could be no thought of division then; fighting for their lives, the factions had to stay together. And out of that grew a stronger and a greater Rome.

    The cork came out with a bang.

    There! the abbot said. I finally got it. Please hold out your glass. I cannot understand why I always have so much trouble with a cork. There are those who just nudge it gently.

    You’re all thumbs, Harcourt told him. You always were all thumbs.

    The abbot filled his visitor’s glass, then filled his own, set the bottle on a table within easy reach, and settled back, sprawling in the chair.

    Lifting his glass, he said, Appreciate this, please. It is almost the last of the special vintage. There may be a few more bottles, no more than a half dozen at the most. And to think—at one time we had five barrels of it.

    Harcourt nodded. Yes, I recall. You’ve told me the sad story several times. You lost it in the raid.

    That’s right. We lost almost everything we had. Our beloved abbot slaughtered and many fine brothers dead, others scattered, hiding in the woods. Our outbuildings burned, the abbey sacked, everything of value taken. The cattle and the poultry either butchered or driven off. Granaries emptied. The smokehouse stripped. They left us to starve. Had it not been for the charity of the castle …

    Harcourt interrupted him. The catalogue of the abbey’s losses, as conjured up by this abbot, had no end to it. We were lucky, Harcourt said. We were able to drive them off.

    You more than drove them off, the abbot told him. You put the fear of God in them. There have been no further raids since that day of seven years ago. You taught them a lesson they have not even now forgotten. Oh, now and then, some minor forays, easily beaten off, mostly by the Little Folk, who apparently know no better. Elves and brownies and fairies, and the fairies are the worst of all. They can’t hurt us much, but they do play shabby tricks. I’m certain it was the fairies who soured our store of new October ale last autumn. We have a good brewmaster. He’s been making beer for years. You can’t tell me the fault was his. The thing about the fairies is that they can sneak up on you. I sighted a flock of them the other day, but they went winging past.

    By the way, said Harcourt, we saw a dragon just an hour or so ago, while we were returning from the hunt.

    Whenever I hear someone mention a dragon, said the abbot, I always remember the time when you and Hugh tried to catch one.

    I know, said Harcourt. All the people I know remember that, to my continuing embarrassment. What they forget is that Hugh and I were only twelve years old at the time and had not a lick of sense. We found this baby dragon that had fallen from its nest and was scrabbling around at the foot of Dragon Crag. The older dragons knew it had fallen and were making quite an uproar about it, but they couldn’t reach the youngster because of the heavy growth of trees. When Hugh and I saw the little dragon, all that we could think was how great it would be to have a baby dragon for a pet. Not thinking, of course, of what we’d do with it once it had grown up."

    You roped it, didn’t you?

    Yes. We hustled back to the castle and got two lengths of rope and came back, and the dragon was still there. We figured we’d get two nooses around its neck and thus could control it. I got the noose of my rope over its neck, but there was a lot of loose stone and other rubble on the hillside, and Hugh fell down and couldn’t throw his noose. The baby dragon started after us, and we knew then that we’d better get out of there. Both of us dropped our ropes, and even then it was a close thing. It was only by the grace of God that Hugh managed to escape that raging little dragon.

    My father, God rest his soul, the abbot said, when he heard of it, fair whaled the tail off Hugh. I tried to talk him out of it. I said it was just a boyish prank and a part of growing up! But he wouldn’t listen to me. He grabbed hold of Hugh with one hand and a paddle with the other …

    What incensed grandfather the worst, I do believe, said Harcourt, was the loss of the ropes. He lectured me on how hard rope was to come by, and he told me how feckless I was and how I’d never grow up to be a man. By the time he got through with me, I was crawling on my belly. I think he wanted to give me a licking, but he didn’t. I wish he had; it would have gone easier than the things he said to me.

    Thinking of it, said the abbot, I’ve often wondered if there is a dragon out there somewhere, flying around with your rope still hanging about his neck.

    I’ve often wondered, too, Harcourt said.

    It’s been a long time since I have seen a dragon, said the abbot. And I can’t say I’m sorry for it. Dragons are a scaly lot. And you can’t get at them. They swoop down and strike, then flap up into the air again, and you haven’t got a chance of getting back at them. I remember how one of them would come sailing down and grab a cow, flying off with the poor beast in its grip. I always felt so sorry for the animals they took. The dragons never bothered to kill them; they just hauled them off. I saw one once that grabbed two pigs, one in each of its claws, which took a bit of doing, even for a dragon. I never will forget the squealing of those shoats. Pigs are the squealingest things there are, and those two porkers, dangling from the dragon’s claws, must have set the record as the loudest in all of Christendom. I ran along, shaking my fist at the dragon and yelling words after it that now, as a churchly man, I could not repeat for fear of the injury I might inflict upon my mortal soul. But now there are fewer dragons, and the ogres and the trolls and others of the larger kind of Evil do not cross the river. Only the fairies and the elves and some of the smaller goblins ever come across, and we can cope with them, for they are only pesky rather than being downright dangerous.

    The Evil is caught between two fires, said Harcourt. The barbarians to the east and north of them and the legions to the south of them. Although why they should fear the legions I don’t know, for the legions are pulled far back from this frontier and perhaps from all the others. Pulled far back, I would suppose, because of the stupidity of Roman politics. It may be us the Evil is afraid of, although that’s hard to comprehend. I don’t mean us alone, but all the other forts and castles strung along the river.

    It may be true, however, said the abbot Seven years ago they overran this abbey—quite easily, I might say, for your average monk is not a fighting man—and some other religious communities and a number of unfortified or poorly fortified homesteads, but castles up and down the river generally held against them and inflicted painful damage on them. They took Fontaine, of course …

    He stopped speaking, and for a moment there was an embarrassed silence.

    Then he said, I am sorry, Charles. I should not have mentioned it. But my big mouth runs on and on, and I cannot seem to stop.

    It’s all right, said Harcourt. The memory has grown hazy with the years. It no longer hurts. I’ve learned to live with it.

    Although, he told himself, that was not the truth. It had never grown hazy with the years, and it still did hurt, and he’d not learned to live with it.

    He still could see her in his mind as he had seen her that last time of all—that May morning with the spring breeze blowing a strand of her golden hair across her face, her lithe body limned against the blueness of the sky as she sat her horse to say goodbye to him. The hair, wild in the wind, had blown across her face and shielded it from him, so that now he could not remember the shape her face had taken.

    He would have sworn, at one time, that he would never forget her face, that he did not need to see it, for he knew every feature of it; and yet, over the years, he had forgotten it. Perhaps, he thought, time was only trying to be kind to him, but he could have wished that it had been less kind.

    Eloise, he said, talking to himself, if I only could remember, if I could recall your face. It had been a laughing face, he knew, a happy face, but he could not now recall the crinkle of happy laughter about her eyes, nor the shape her lips had taken when she smiled.

    The abbot held out the bottle, and automatically Harcourt held out the glass. The abbot refilled his visitor’s glass and added a dollop to his own, then settled back into the chair.

    Perhaps, he said, starting up where he had left off, it is best the way it stands. It is a pattern that has gone on for centuries—as you point out, back to the fourth century. The barbarians to the east and north, we to the south and west, the Evil in between the two. The situation seesaws back and forth. Five hundred years or more ago the Evil pulled back, perhaps because the pressure from the barbarians lessened, and Rome extended its frontiers. Rome was strong in those days—it was then we had our short-lived renaissance. Whether the new awakening represented by the renaissance was killed by renewed onslaughts of the Evil is problematical; it might have faded out in any case. Something less than two centuries ago the barbarians surged forward once again, and the Evil, responding to their advance and needing living room, came roaring back at us. Rome was falling into decline again, and the legions were slogging back, with the refugees in flight ahead of them. The new frontier became our river, and so it has been since. But the point I am trying to make is that the Evil still serves as a buffer between us and the barbarians. Of the two, the Evil may be the easier to live with. We know them, we can predict to a point what they may do. For us it probably is better with the Evil across the river rather than the barbarians.

    I don’t know about that, said Harcourt. The barbarians are men, and we’d fight them as man against man, steel against steel. The Evil are nasty things to face. They come at you with fangs and claws. Their breath is foul against your face. There are no clean strokes. They are hard to kill. They hang on and on. I have had my belly full of them and their way of fighting.

    The abbot leaned forward in his chair.

    We lost many fine brothers and almost everything we owned in that raid. But it’s passing strange, and I am upset by it, for when I think of all we lost, one thing sticks in my mind. An item that undoubtedly was an insignificant possession. Perhaps you remember it. The little crystal prism that held a rainbow in it.

    I do remember, Harcourt told him. I came here as a boy—I think that you and Hugh were with me.

    Yes, I recall. We were.

    One of the monks, I forget which one, took us into the sanctuary and showed the prism to us. There was a shaft of light shining from a window high up in the wall, and when he held the prism up so that it was struck by that shaft of sunlight, it blazed with all the glory of a rainbow.

    It meant nothing, really, said the abbot. It was a mere curiosity, a conversation piece. Although, come to think of it, it could have been more than that. A piece of art, perhaps. It had been made by an ancient craftsman. Some said in Rome, others said in Gaul. Cut from a piece of the purest crystal, polished expertly. More than likely it was crafted centuries ago, probably during that now-vanished renaissance.

    I have often pondered, Harcourt said, what the world might now be like if the renaissance had not been throttled by the rush of circumstance. It built this abbey; it built and created many other things in which we hold a pardonable pride. Eloise gave me a book of hours dating from that time. No artist today can do that sort of work.

    I know. I mourn it, too. The prism was a small example. The old abbot, the one who was killed in the raid, once told me that it was an expression of meticulous mathematics. What he meant by that I can’t pretend to know. But no matter now—the prism’s gone. For some time, I thought it might have been overlooked by the raiders. Perhaps, I told myself, one of them had picked it up and, not holding it to the light so that he could see the glory of it, had tossed it to one side as a worthless piece of glass. But, search as I might, I was unable to find it. Now I’m convinced that it was taken.

    It’s a pity. It was so beautiful.

    Legend has it, said the abbot, that there was another prism. Much larger than the one we had. Perhaps fashioned by the same craftsman. At one time, so the legend says, it was the property of a wizard by the name of Lasandra.

    I have heard the legend, Harcourt said.

    Then you know the rest of the story.

    Only that the soul of a saint was supposed to have been imprisoned by Lasandra in the prism. No details. Just that

    The details, said the abbot, if they are details and not simply pieces of disconnected legend, are hazy at the best. There is, I would suspect, a good deal of nonsense in all legends. But the story is that the saint, whose name, I regret to tell you, has been lost in the mists of time, tried to expel the Evil from this world into the Outer Darkness. That had been his intentions, but he messed up somehow, and there were some of the Evil left. He drove them through the gate, so the story goes, and slammed it shut behind them, but he’d not driven all of them. He missed a few. And the ones he missed, conspiring with the sorcerer Lasandra, trapped him and slew him; but before slaying him, they trapped his soul inside the prism. I tell you only what I have read in ancient documents.

    You mean that you have studied this legend?

    There is little that can be studied. There may be more, but I do not know of it. There was a reason for the little study I’ve made.

    And the reason?

    A whisper. Even less than rumor. A whisper only. The whisper says that, in some manner not explained, the Church wrested the prism of Lasandra from the Evil and kept it in holy reverence, but that it again was lost. How lost the whisper does not say.

    So the whole story could be no more than legend. There are so many legends that one cannot give equal weight to all of them. Many of them may be no more than simple-minded tales made up in intervals of idleness by some inventive mind. That could be true, the abbot said. What you say is true. But there is further. Do you wish to hear it?

    Of course I wish to hear it.

    Your family built this abbey. You know that, of course. But do you know that it was built on the site of a much older abbey, one that had been abandoned for many years before your family came here? Some of the scattered stones of the old structure still stand in the walls of this one.

    I had understood there had been an earlier building. I did not know it had been an abbey. Don’t tell me …

    But I will, the abbot said. The whisper continues. It has one more gasp left in it. It says that the prism of Lasandra was housed in reverence in that old deserted abbey which was replaced by this one.

    And you believe that?

    I fight against believing it. I tell myself that none of the story may be true. But I am tempted to believe. Charles, I am sorely tempted.

    Someone knocked loudly at the door.

    Enter, the abbot called.

    The door was opened by a monk. He said to Harcourt, My lord, the miller’s waif is here.

    You mean Yolanda? the abbot asked.

    That is the one I mean, said the monk, sniffing just a little. She carries word, my lord, that your Uncle Raoul has come home again.

    Two

    Hurrying around to the front of the abbey, with the abbot trailing behind him, Harcourt found the miller’s waif, Yolanda, waiting for him, half encircled by a crowd of monks. Another monk was leading out his horse.

    What is this? Harcourt asked Yolanda. You say my uncle’s home. How come that it is you who brings the word to me? If my uncle were home …

    He’s not Home, she said. He is not home as yet. He lies in my father’s house.

    Lies in…?

    He is sick and weak, she said. He was sleeping when I left. My mother tried to feed him, but he fell asleep before he could take the food. So I ran up to the castle—I, rather than my father, for he is lame, you know.

    Yes, that I know.

    The castle told me you were here. Knowing you would wish to know as soon as possible …

    Yes, yes, he said impatiently. It was kind of you.

    It will take men to carry him to the castle, she said. "Your grandfather said he would get together enough men to carry a litter up the river bluffs. When I left, he was cursing something dreadful because all the men were scattered, doing different jobs, and it

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