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.
II
We buried the old wizard at the royal graveyard of Yurt late in the afternoon of the following day. Joachim read the service while the rest of us stood silently, including the priests of Saint Eusebius, who now threatened to become as cranky as their saint, and the duchess, with Dominic and Nimrod on either side of her.
They offered me the shovel to toss the first load of dirt onto the coffin. I was still young enough that even though I might fear violent death, I had no idea how I would react to the prospect of slowly growing old and weak. I couldn’t be sure what I might think in another two hundred years, but I hoped fervently I wouldn’t be tempted to try what my predecessor had.
The royal constable, who had nearly despaired of seeing any of us again after the knights of Yurt had come home with wild stories of the monster and of the duchess’s two suitors, had been overjoyed when we rode up to the castle. He promised to have the old wizard’s books and effects brought up to the castle in the next few days and to find a home for the calico cat.
Dominic fell into step beside me as we started back up the hill from the cemetery. I glanced at him in trepidation, wondering if I was going to be fired even before I had a chance to pursue the monster.
But the regent only seemed thoughtful. “Wizard, have you ever suddenly wished you could go somewhere and start over, leave all your problems and responsibilities behind, but discover you’ve said and done things which commit you far too deeply even to try?”
I felt a sudden and completely unprecedented burst of affection for the royal nephew. “I’m glad you understand,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “That’s exactly how I feel.”
The three priests refused the regent’s offer of hospitality for the night, expressing the intention of putting ten more miles behind them before nightfall and of being in the episcopal city the next day. Joachim saw them off with mutual blessings and expressions of spiritual good fellowship, that sounded sincere if not enthusiastic.
He urged them to give his personal greetings to the bishop. Since the bishop would already have received the chaplain’s message, via carrier pigeon, that the relics of Saint Eusebius would stay in Yurt after all and that the wood nymph posed no problems for the sanctity of the grove, it was too late for the priests to tell him a different story.
Evrard and I also had somewhere to go. I was trying to decide if we should start back for the valley at once, or if it would be too irresponsible to sleep in a real bed one more night before beginning our search for the monster, when Dominic, fully back on his royal dignity, decided for me.
“You and the chaplain started this,” he said, “when you claimed to be competent judges between Prince Ascelin and me.” In fact, I thought, he and the duchess had started it much earlier, by both deciding they needed their own real households. “You may have forgotten about the integrity and purity of the kingdom, but I have not. Tomorrow, the duchess must be married.”