“Twelve years I’ve waited!” he said, over and over. “Thank you, Lord! Passed over and passed over — but no more!”
He then rose, and with fitting jurisprudential gravity, proclaimed, “These men have not practiced any unlicensed witchcraft. I rule that they are true messengers of God, and should be treated with respect.”
Finding that his pockets were now richer by several gold coins — the difference between his old salary and new — the new-minted Adjudicator promptly sold his cart and donkey to Pender the village blacksmith and left town in a covered carriage, with a newly-hired driver and two new horses. Later rumors said that he arrived home to find he had been awarded the King’s Fourteenth Judicial Circuit.
In the wake of the Prosecutor General’s astonishing transformation, Squire’s Wood began to fill with people from the village and even some of the surrounding villages — for news travels fast in these rural areas — turning the two men’s camp into a site of pilgrimage. The size of the gathering grew so quickly that Father Bannity and some of the wood’s nearer and soberer neighbors worried that the entire forest soon would be trampled flat, but the squireward could not turn the newcomers away any more than he could have held back the tide at Landsend.
Although none of this swarm of postulants was turned away, not all received their heart’s desire, either — Eli’s hand opened only to one in perhaps three or four and it was impossible to force the issue. One man, a jar maker named Keely, tried to pry the big man’s fingers apart and shove his own hand in, and although he succeeded, nothing magical happened to him except that he developed a painful boil in the middle of his forehead the following day.
Some of the pilgrims’ wishes turned out to be surprisingly small and domestic: a man whose sick cow suddenly recovered, a woman whose youngest son abruptly discovered he could hear as well as he had before the fever. Others were more predictable, like the man who after clasping Eli’s hand discovered a pot of old coins buried under an ancient wall he was rebuilding.
To the astonishment of many, two blighted young folk who lived on neighboring farms, a young man with a shattered leg and a girl with a huge strawberry blotch on her face, both went to Eli, and both were gifted with a handclasp, but came out again looking just the same as they had before. But within the next few days the young man’s drunkard father died of a fit, leaving him the farm, and the girl’s cruel, miserly uncle who treated her like a servant fell under the wheels of a cart and died also, leaving her free to marry if anyone would have her. The two young people did indeed marry each other, and seemed quite happy, although they both still bore the disfigurements that had made them so pitiable to the rest of the village.
The only apparent failure of Eli’s magical touch was Pender, the blacksmith, who went to the campsite a massive, strapping man with a beard that reached halfway down his chest, and went away again with the shape and voice and apparently all the working parts of a slender young woman. He left town the same night, trading the Prosecutor General’s old cart for a pair of pretty dresses before setting off on the donkey toward the nearest city to start his life over (at least so he told his neighbors), so no one was ever able to find out exactly how such a strange thing had happened when others had been served so well.
Soon the lame youth and other grateful folk came and built a great tent in Squire’s Wood for Eli and Feliks to shelter in, and began bringing them daily offerings of food and drink. People were coming to see the two strangers from all around, and even the villagers who had not obtained a supernatural gift from the silent giant came to realize how valuable his presence was: the village was full of pilgrims, including some quite well-to-do folk who were willing to pay exorbitant prices to be fed and housed near the miracle worker.
Father Bannity, still basking in the joyful light of his newly-recovered faith, did not doubt that Eli and Feliks were gifts from God, but he had not lost all caution or good sense, either, and he was worried by what was happening to his quiet village. He sent a messenger describing recent events to Dondolan, the nearest accredited wizard, who had an eyrie near the top of Reaching Peak. The wizard had not passed through the village for years — but he and the priest had met several times, and Bannity liked the mage and trusted his good sense, certainly beyond that of the village elders, who were growing as greedy of pilgrimage gold as children tumbled into a treacle vat, happily eating themselves to death.
Dondolan the Clear-Eyed, as they had been named back in his Academy days, took one look at the priest’s letter, then leaped out of his chair and began packing (a task which takes a wizard a much shorter time than the average traveler.) The messenger asked if there would be any reply, and Dondolan told him, “I will be there before you.” Then, suiting deed to word, he promptly vanished.
He appeared again in the village at the base of the mountain, and took his horse from the livery stable there — even an accomplished wizard will not travel by magic for twenty leagues, not knowing what he will find at the other end, for it is a fierce drain on the resources — and set out. Other than an ill-considered attempt by some local bandits to waylay him just outside Drunken Princes’ Pass, an interaction which increased the frog population of the highlands but did not notably slow Dondolan’s progress, it was a swift journey, and he reached the nameless village within two days. Spurning more ordinary couriers, he had sent a raven ahead, and as a result Father Bannity waited at the crossroads outside of town to meet him.
When they had greeted each other — fondly, for the respect was mutual, despite their differences on the theological practicalities — Bannity led Dondolan through the fields around the outskirts of the village, so as not to cause more ruckus and rumor than was necessary: already the village practically breathed the stuff, and the pilgrims arriving daily from all over only made things more frantic.
“Do you wish to speak to the two of them?” Bannity asked. “It will be difficult, but I might persuade the village elders to let us close off the camp, although it will not be easy to remove all the addled folk who are living there now — they have practically made a new town in the middle of the forest.”
“We should decide nothing until I see these miracle men,” Dondolan said. “Although I must say that the description of them in your letter gave me an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach.”
“Why?” asked Bannity with some alarm. “Do you think they mean harm? I worried mainly that so many pilgrims would jeopardize the safety of our little town, drawing thieves and confidence tricksters and such. But surely God has sent those two to us — they have done so much good!”
“Perhaps. That is why I will restrain my conjectures until I have seen them.”
They made their way through the woods, between groups of revelers singing and praying, gathered around so many campfires it seemed more like the eve of a great battle than twilight in the woods outside a quiet village too unassuming even to have its own name. As they grew close to the great pale tent and the crowd of people waiting there — some patiently, others loudly demanding that they be allowed to be next to see the wonder-workers because their need was so great — Bannity found it increasingly difficult to make headway through the throng. It was a mark of how many of these people were strangers to the area that the village’s well-respected priest almost got into two fights, and only Dondolan’s discreet use of a quelling-charm got them past those at the front of the line without real violence.
They slipped through the tent’s flap-door. Dondolan across the big tent at the miraculous pair sitting like minor potentates on high-backed chairs the villagers had built them, the small man Feliks and the big man with the misshapen skull. Feliks was scratching himself and laughing at something. Eli was staring down at one of the kneeling postulants before him, his expression as emptily self-absorbed as a bullfrog waiting for a fly of sufficient size to happen past. Dondolan swallowed, then stepped back out of the tent again, and Bannity followed him. Even by torchlight, the priest could see the wizard had gone quite pale.