I turned from the priests and began walking as fast as I could, cold with fear, toward the cave. I realized I had not seen Evrard since the leader of the apprentices had begun scaling the cliff.
He had wanted all along to try to catch the monster on his own. He must have taken advantage of the rest of us being distracted, first by the apprentices’ confession and then by the Cranky Saint, to slip away to the cave. If he thought I was being too deeply drawn into the affairs of the Church, then he might think it was his duty as a wizard to look for the monster without me.
Joachim caught up. There was no need to explain to him what had happened. “I’ve got the old wizard’s staff for light,” I said.
We reached the cave entrance and looked in. I did not sense the immediate presence of the monster, but there were fresh sooty marks on the limestone, showing that someone had come this way very recently with a torch.
I illuminated the silver ball on top of the staff, and we hurried, bent double, down the first stretch of tunnel and into the great chamber. I had no time to waste admiring the walls glinting like jewels in the light. I went immediately to the passage on the far side which the old wizard and I had taken. Lying on the cave floor, almost invisible among the gravel, was a pale line of kinked thread.
“He paid out the thread yesterday,” said Joachim, “and then wound it back up as we ran into each dead end.”
We hurried along the tunnel, the wizard’s staff tipped forward so that the silver ball showed the faint line of the thread we followed.
“Evrard!” I shouted inside my mind. “Where are you?”
I heard his answering mental voice at once. “I’m fine. I’ll see you shortly.”
I was only slightly reassured, and we hurried on. But in less than ten more minutes we saw a light flickering ahead of us that was not the light of my wizard’s staff, and Evrard came around the corner, carrying a torch.
“Sorry if I worried you,” he said, almost nonchalantly. “But with all that business about the saint, it didn’t seem as though I was needed. I just wanted to explore the cave a little more. By the way, Daimbert, I did find your magic marks. Did the Cranky Saint ever make it clear what he wanted to do?”
Joachim told him briefly what had happened, Evrard tidily winding the thread back up while we walked. I tried addressing him sternly, mind to mind, but he now had his thoughts well shielded. I shrugged and gave it up. We knew at any rate that the monster was still deep within the cave.
Back in the valley, the three priests were grumpily packing, preparing to go. There was no sign of the hermit or his apprentices.
“I think we’d better go too,” I said. “I need to get back to the royal castle, to bury my predecessor as quickly as possible.”
“It’s already late,” said Joachim. “We can’t possibly make it there tonight.”
“I am leaving this valley,” I said as distinctly as I could. “I can use the magic light to show our way after dark.”
The chaplain looked at me in assessment and shook his head. “You’re already exhausted, in body and in spirit. And even your magic staff won’t cast enough light for the horses. Let’s go to the duchess’s castle tonight, and on to the royal castle tomorrow.”
As we all rode down the valley, the wizard’s coffin strapped to the priests’ pack horse, I wondered uneasily if my desire to be free at last of the valley had distorted my judgment. I had stayed in the valley even when I knew my duty as a wizard was to go in search of the monster. Now I had a duty both to bury my predecessor at home and to catch the monster here, and my strongest drive was to get out the valley, not necessarily because it was the best choice, but because I had been unable to do so before.
I told myself that a saint who could summon lightning from a clear sky would not let a creature of magic and bone hurt those who served his shrine, that the monster might now wander aimlessly in the cave for weeks. But I also told myself that barring miracles, and miracles by their very nature could not be counted on, religion was primarily useful for dealing with the supernatural and the hereafter. The priests might try to explain to wizards the deep metaphysical significance of the forces of the material universe, but they always seemed to leave us with the full responsibility for dealing with those forces.
Evrard and I rode in front, and as we started up the steep road a tree branch before us suddenly dipped. For a second we saw the wood nymph, who smiled and gave us a cheerful wave before disappearing again among the leaves.
She had called the saint’s name as the wind had whirled around the shrine, and although I refused to speculate about whether that might mean she had a soul after all, I guessed that her old friend Eusebius had spoken to her at last.
At the top of the cliff, the wreckage of the booth and the windlass still sent thin plumes of smoke into the late afternoon air. As we approached, I was surprised to see the young man in the feathered cap. He and three others, whom I recognized as the men I had thought were pilgrims, were poking through the ashes. So far they had found half a dozen unbroken ceramic figurines.
The “pilgrims” stepped back rather self-consciously, but the young man looked up and gave his customary smile, in spite of the ruins of his plans-and, for that matter, of Dominic’s. “Greetings, Wizard,” he said to Evrard, ignoring the rest of us. “I know I told you I’d get back to you about your offer to come help us with your magic, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to start until later this summer, and maybe not this year at all.”
“Oh?” asked Evrard impassively.
“As you can see, we had a little accident. And the people who were sponsoring us seem to have pulled out. We aren’t going to be able to make our ‘overhead’ costs, much less any profit at this rate. We haven’t even quite made up our minds yet whether we should continue to try to set up here.” None of us were fooled by this comment. “But if we need a wizard for another project, we’ll be sure to keep you in mind!”
“Thank you,” said Evrard gravely. “Just remember my fee scale.” It was not until we were another quarter mile down the road that he began to laugh.
Shadows were long when we reached the duchess’s castle. So far, it appeared, no one there had married anyone, but both Dominic and Nimrod were still at the castle, neither apparently speaking to the other. Joachim hurried up to the pigeon loft to send the bishop his message, but the rest of sat down in the great hall in something of an exhausted daze.
Diana was mellower toward her wizard than I had expected. After she had set her constable to finding accommodations for all of us, she sat down to listen to his account of what had happened in the valley in the two days since she had left. Evrard told her most of the story, even though he had missed the Cranky Saint’s miraculous demonstration of his intention to stay at the grove and had gotten the details from Joachim and me. As for any information about the death of the old wizard, other than the bald fact that the monster had killed him, I had not told anyone and did not intend to.
I hardly heard their conversation, giving all my attention instead to hot soup and new bread and butter. But I did rouse myself at the end of the meal to address the duchess.
“My lady, do you think it would be possible for you to send some food on a regular basis to the hermit and his apprentices?”
Diana actually looked embarrassed. “Of course. I should have thought of that myself. The valley is surrounded by my duchy,” with a sharp look toward Dominic. “I’ll arrange for them to get fresh bread from my kitchens every week, starting tomorrow.”
When Evrard and I went up to the freshly repainted wizard’s room at the top of the duchess’s castle, I fell at once into exhausted sleep. But some time after midnight I awoke with a gasp, drenched with sweat and feeling my heart pounding with nightmare terror.
Listening to Evrard’s peaceful breathing, I tried to persuade myself that it was indeed only a nightmare, that Saint Eusebius, after all that had happened, was unlikely now to send me a true vision.
Slowing my heart with long, deep breaths, I settled back down, but as soon as I closed my eyes against the room’s darkness I could see it again: the monster roaring, wide-mouthed, as it had when it had killed the old wizard, but this time, standing helpless before it, were all the people I loved in Yurt.