“Now that the sin has been rebuked,” added the round priest, “there can be no doubt that the saint will wish to leave for a more virtuous site.”
For a moment the old hermit looked stunned. “But the saint’s sign-” he began, almost pathetically.
“Wait,” I said suddenly. I had just thought of something. “You priests and hermits don’t want to start squabbling in front of a wizard about interpreting a saint’s intention.” I hoped the Cranky Saint would go along with this. “Once before, fifteen hundred years ago, priests from your city came to take the relic of the Holy Toe, and the saint revealed unambiguously his desire to remain. Test him again the same way!”
I stepped back, watching and waiting while they talked it over. The old hermit turned his smile full on me. The three priests brought out and lit more candles, then knelt in silent prayer for a moment. They then stepped up to the altar and all put their hands on the reliquary.
“Saint Eusebius, we wish to take thy holy relics with us, to honor them and serve thee devotedly,” said the thin priest. “Therefore we beg you to make your will explicit to us, your humble servants. We shall now most reverently lift your reliquary, and ask that you express your desire to accompany us by making the Golden Toe as light as a feather in our hands. In the name of the Father, and of-”
As the thin priest spoke, all three began to lift, but his voice faded as nothing happened. The reliquary remained as still as though nailed to the altar. It didn’t look as though today’s priests were having any better luck than their predecessors fifteen centuries earlier.
The thin priest bent down and looked at the base, as though suspecting a trick. “What’s with this? Let’s try it again,” he said in an undertone, not sounding pious at all.
“-and of the Son-” They gave another, more violent heave. The reliquary did not budge.
The old hermit stepped up beside them. “Let me see,” he said. He slipped one hand beneath the Golden Toe and lifted. It came up as light as a feather in his hand.
He set it back on the altar and turned to the priests. “Do you have your answer, my brothers?” he asked in genuine sweetness.
The round priest could not resist a last tug, mumbling “-and of the Holy Spirit!” but it was as ineffective as the first two.
Joachim cleared his throat. “The test has been clearly rendered,” he said. “The saint’s purpose may have been ambiguous before, but there can be no ambiguity now. Indeed-”
He stopped speaking and looked up. The sky above us darkened, and a swirling wind suddenly surrounded the grove. The air touched us, very lightly in spite of a force strong enough, I felt, to have lifted us from the ground. I would have expected the wind to smell of the trees and river, or even of the priests’ incense. But it smelled of neither, being instead of an almost overpowering sweetness, even sweeter than the king’s best roses.
I stared although I could see nothing beyond the valley itself, gripped by emotion that combined great fear with great joy. Just for a second, although I could never reconstruct the explanation afterwards, I knew I did not need to question what the saint had or had not done, and felt overcome with awe and humility.
In the middle of the wind, I heard a voice, a woman’s voice, high in the trees above us, and realized that it was the wood nymph. She called, “Eusebius!”
The echo of her voice murmured up and down the valley, and then the wind was gone as suddenly as it had came up. I felt a bump, mental rather than physical, as I fell back to myself out of the swirling air.
Joachim passed a hand over his brow. I knew how he felt. But the chaplain spoke calmly. “Indeed,” he said, continuing where he had left off, “we can no longer doubt the will of the saint. He wishes his relics to remain in this valley, where they have been since the day of his martyrdom. I am sorry you had such a long and difficult trip, my brothers.”
The priests’ eyes came back into focus, and they went from looking dreamy to looking highly irritated: with Joachim, with the hermit, with me, and most of all with the Cranky Saint. But there was little answer they could give. The youngest priest began blowing out the candles that had not been extinguished in the wind.
I glanced around the grove, mentally catching my breath, and suddenly realized who was missing. “Joachim,” I said, taking him by the arm, “where is he? Where is Evrard?”
“The other wizard?” said the youngest priest. “He went off in that direction a while ago.” He gestured vaguely, but there was no question of the direction. He was motioning toward the cave.
PART EIGHT — THE MONSTER
I
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.”