It was going to be a dark night; there was no moon, and clouds hid the stars. Yet, almost ashamedly, I felt safer, less as though trapped in a nightmare, with the chaplain there, even though I knew that the Church’s normal reaction to magical problems was to leave them to the wizardry they claimed not even to respect.
Joachim sat staring silently at our small fire. The air from the open doorway made the flames flicker and cast tall, oddly twisted shadows on the wall behind us.
I was suddenly convinced that he was going to ask me if he should accept the bishop’s invitation to leave Yurt and join the cathedral chapter. Because I didn’t want to have to answer that question, I tried to forestall him with a completely different comment.
“Here’s something you’ll be interested in. I know you and the bishop were worried that it might not be suitable to have a wood nymph in a Holy Grove. It turns out that she was a good friend of Saint Eusebius, all those years ago, and that the saint converted her to Christianity.”
Joachim gave me a long look as I pushed on. “It’s actually rather poignant. She’s worried that she may not have a soul. She seems to want to become human, with an immortal soul, even though being human means having to die. I’m afraid she really may not have a soul, because she says her friend the saint has never appeared to her since his death.”
“You know,” said Joachim, “after two years of knowing you, I still don’t understand your sense of humor.”
At this I laughed. It was refreshing to be able to laugh. “Of course you don’t understand why I would make a joke about something like this. It’s because I’m not joking!”
Joachim lifted one eyebrow at my new-found seriousness.
“Even though she will not grow old or die as long as the world remains,” I continued, “she seems to find something curiously appealing about breaking out of the earth’s endless cycle through death.”
“Of course,” said Joachim, who did not find this attitude curious at all. He seemed suddenly absorbed by the issue of the wood nymph, although I was sure that was not what was really on his mind. “The world is God’s creation, and has enormous good and potential for good within it, but it is still a fallen world. All of us must find it wearying in the end and long for release into the realm of spirit.”
I decided it was safest not to comment on this. I was very far from longing for release, and wizards have a much longer life span than ordinary people-even though, from the wood nymph’s point of view, there probably wasn’t a lot of difference between any of us.
“At any rate,” I said, “if the saint’s relics stay in Yurt, I’m sure the bishop will understand why it won’t be necessary to make her leave. But tell me. You said the saint would reveal his will clearly. Do you know what he really wants to do?”
Joachim hesitated. “Maybe I made a mistake discussing this with a wizard in the first place.”
“Too late now,” I said. “And you did say you wanted my counsel.”
The firelight glinted in the chaplain’s eye, and he shifted his long frame in search of a more comfortable position. He was silent for a moment, looking at the fire rather than at me, and his face slowly went from almost smiling to completely sober.
“The saint’s intention,” he said at last, “will, I am certain, eventually become clear, but it is not clear yet.” He paused for a moment. “He told me he wanted to leave Yurt, but he wouldn’t say why, or where he wanted to go. The priests of the church of Saint Eusebius led my bishop to believe that he had also appeared in a vision to them, asking for his relics to be transferred to their church.”
“But when you questioned the priests closely,” I provided when Joachim again seemed to hesitate, “they admitted that the Cranky Saint had said he wanted to leave the grove, but hadn’t specifically said that he wanted to go with them.”
“But if he didn’t want to go to their church, why should he have appeared to them?” demanded Joachim.
I decided that the old hermit was right in one thing, that the royal chaplain did indeed seem to take his spiritual responsibilities much too seriously. “Because he was cranky,” I suggested. “Because he knew he’d get a response out of them. Because he was angry at the hermit for not having done something about the entrepreneurs. That reminds me. I talked to the hermit this morning, and he seems convinced that Saint Eusebius would want to stay if the entrepreneurs were gone.”
“I didn’t see anyone at the booth when we came by,” said Joachim. “Yet it looks as though they’re actually starting to build a windlass contraption to lower pilgrims down the cliff.”
“Yesterday morning three men dressed as pilgrims-part of the entrepreneurial group in disguise-climbed down by way of the toeholds and came to visit the hermit.”
“Maybe they’ve realized their error in trying to make money from the spiritual things of God,” suggested Joachim.
I found this highly unlikely. “But are the priests planning to take the Holy Toe back with them now?”
“That’s certainly how they’ve interpreted the will of the saint.”
“By the way,” I said, “Nimrod seemed surprised to see the three priests. He still won’t say why he came to Yurt.”
“I thought they were instead surprised to see him,” said Joachim. “The sight of a seven-foot-tall huntsman would startle anyone.”
“I’m fairly certain now that Nimrod and Diana had known each other previously. Otherwise I don’t think that even she would have left with him when Dominic had just proposed.”
Outside the hut, the night made low rustling sounds that I told myself would not have sounded nearly as ominous by daylight. We had abruptly reached the topic of the old wizard.
“Joachim, I’m worried about the regent. He took a group of knights down to the old wizard’s house two days ago, and he certainly should have been back to the castle by last night. Yet you say he wasn’t.”
“What do you think has happened to him?”
“Maybe the old wizard put a spell on him. Or maybe the wizard’s monster escaped, and Dominic set off after it and hasn’t been able to catch it.”
“I told you I wanted your counsel,” said Joachim quietly. “I’ve been trying to find a tactful way to say this, because I don’t want to seem to accuse you of neglecting your responsibilities.” Maybe associating with the priests, who had even less tact than he did, was teaching him some at last. “But your predecessor’s creature has gotten loose.”
“It has?” I forced myself to say, in a voice that sounded loud and squeaky in my own ears. It was one thing to fear such a possibility, another to know it had actually happened.
“We heard of it today as we were riding toward this valley. The first word we had was in the village just a few miles from the castle.” This would have been the same village from which the disputants had come, not long before the king left Yurt. It seemed years ago.
“The local priest came out to meet us, terrified. Something had come to the village yesterday. It was seen rummaging through a chicken house. They thought of course it was a thief and set the dogs on it.”
Somehow hearing this in Joachim’s quiet voice made it worse.
“But the dogs wouldn’t attack it and fled with their tails between their legs. By now they’d realized it wasn’t just a common thief. Someone shot at it, though the priest told us that he, of course, tried to stop him. But it didn’t make any difference. The creature walked off with three arrows stuck in its back.”
Then even Nimrod might not be able to stop it.
“It killed five chickens.”
“Five chickens,” I repeated, thinking I should be grateful it was not five children.
“They belonged to a young couple, who, I gather, had just set up housekeeping. I think I recognized them. The young woman was very blond, quite distinctive-looking. I believe they were among the disputants the king swore to peace.”
King Haimeric’s judgment, I thought bleakly, had brought them back together after what had probably been a major rift, but no sooner were they married then a monster had killed their chickens. A monster loose, I reminded myself, while the Royal Wizard of Yurt was engrossed in dreamy forgetfulness with the wood nymph.
“I guessed immediately it was the creature that you and the ducal wizard had seen,” said Joachim. “But the village priest thought it might have been a demon.” He gave me a sideways look. “You would have been proud of me. I told him that magic is not a supernatural force, and that our best defense against a magical creature was to find a reliable wizard.”
There were three wizards in the kingdom of Yurt at the moment, and none of them reliable. Just a few days ago, the old wizard had appeared to have his creature very thoroughly imprisoned.
“There didn’t seem to be anything we priests could do,” Joachim continued, “so we went on. As you can imagine, I was even more eager than before to find you.”
And where, all this time, was Dominic? “Did the villagers have any indication which direction it was heading?”
“The third village in which it was seen is located at the base of the plateau,” said Joachim soberly. “It seems to be heading this way.”
I was furious with myself. I had seen it in the wizard’s cottage, seen it and been terrified of it, but I had persuaded both myself and Joachim that it was safely constrained by the old wizard’s magic. But I had not thought through what I had already had good reason to know: that the old wizard had lost control: of his mind, his soul, his good sense, or his magic.
It would be ironic if now, when I had at last persuaded Joachim that wizardry was not just an inferior and misapprehended version of religion, and he and the old hermit both turned to me for aid, my magic turned out to be completely useless.
Evrard, in spite of taking Elerius’s course, was not going to be any help. If the old wizard’s monster was even as good at hiding as Evrard’s stick-creature, then I would need Nimrod, but he was camped somewhere between here and the royal castle, and I’d never find him in the dark. I was more than ready to swallow my pride and ask for the school’s assistance, in spite of how my predecessor would react, but I was thirty miles from the nearest telephone and over five miles from the nearest pigeon loft.
I raised my eyes and found Joachim watching me soberly. “You could try praying for guidance,” he suggested.
I restrained myself from saying that that no saint would listen to a wizard. But his comment did give me an idea and, very briefly, hope. “Saint Eusebius,” I said. “The Cranky Saint won’t want a magical undead monster in his valley. The saint must like you, or he wouldn’t have appeared to you in the first place. Maybe he’ll listen if you ask for his help.”
“I constantly ask the saints for their help,” said Joachim.
I considered asking Evrard’s question, why the saint hadn’t just blasted the entrepreneurs-and, by extension, the wizard’s monster- with lightning if he didn’t like them, but it seemed pointless.
Besides, it was only a guess that the entrepreneurs even bothered the saint. His cryptic demand to have his relics moved elsewhere could be based on almost anything-even a personal animosity toward the apprentice hermits. I wondered for a moment that if the saint didn’t want to go with the three priests, he might show it by allowing the monster to eat them, but even I had to dismiss this thought as irreverent.
But maybe Joachim’s prayers would keep the monster at bay until first light, when Evrard or I could fly back to the telephone at the royal castle without becoming hopelessly lost. “You told me the old wizard might have made his creature out of jealous pride,” I said. “Having made it, do you think he set it loose intentionally? Is he trying to catch it himself, or in trying to catch it will I have to fight him as well?”
“That I cannot tell you,” said Joachim.
One thing I could not do tonight was sleep. I leaned my chin on my fist and tried to plan for tomorrow. If the monster did not appear in the valley tonight, then I would have to go looking for it. The fire had burned low, but the coals still glowed deep red.
Very early, I decided, I would fly out of the valley and find Nimrod, and then he and I would track the creature from where it had last been seen. First, though, I would roust Evrard out of the wood nymph’s tree, whether he liked it or not, and send him back to the royal castle as fast as he could fly, to telephone the school. Then he could start the search for Dominic from the old wizard’s house-and, for that matter, for the old wizard himself. This implied, of course, that they weren’t all lying dead there already.
I paused at this point in my deliberations, wondering if Evrard could fly that far. I knew I couldn’t have when I first came to Yurt.
Joachim, who had been silent for several minutes, abruptly stirred, then rolled up in his blanket. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“I can’t. Not with a monster loose. I must not have made this completely clear, Joachim, but the monster’s escape-and, from what you said about the old wizard’s jealousy, its very existence-are my fault. I have to find a way to stop it.”
“You still need your sleep.”
“No,” I said obstinately. “You and I have often sat up most of the night, talking, and I’m always fine the next day.”
“That is, you can still function,” said Joachim mildly, leaning on an elbow and looking at me, “thanks to a spell that you’ve told me gives you a bad headache.”
The problem was that the chaplain knew me too well.
“Lie down and close your eyes,” said Joachim, as though he were my grandmother, twenty years ago, tucking me into bed when I didn’t want to go. “I’ll sing you a hymn to make you sleepy.”
I lay down obediently, knowing this wouldn’t work. But I tried concentrating on the sound of his voice as he sang softly. Joachim had a very pleasant baritone. After a few minutes, I couldn’t hear him any more. I opened my eyes to find that it was already morning.