The man was taken aback for a moment, but he seemed to have quick powers of recovery. “Well, then, maybe you know some other wizard who might be interested. Or maybe you’d even like to lend a hand yourself when the king doesn’t need you! I should put the proposition up to him myself, explain that this will really make Yurt a well-known place, not just a novelty as one of the smallest of the western kingdoms.”
“We’ll take the road down to the Holy Grove,” said Joachim, abruptly swinging back up into the saddle.
“But I haven’t even had a chance yet to tell you about all our souvenirs, Father!” the man said eagerly. “As you can see, we’re not quite ready for business yet, but in the next week or two we hope to have reproductions of the Holy Toe itself, figurines of a dragon-children always like things like that-and booklets telling of the life and miracles of the Cranky Saint.”
Joachim’s shoulders stiffened into rigidity, but he made no answer. Instead he kicked his horse sharply into a trot. I was right behind him. The man in the feathered cap waved cheerfully after us.
After three-quarters of a mile, as the road left the level plateau and began its steep descent toward the valley floor, I had suppressed silent laugher enough that I dared ask a question. Even for me, originally the son of a city merchant, this seemed to have gone much too far. “Had you known about all this?”
“The bishop made a brief reference to ‘some inappropriate activities’ at the site,” said Joachim, looking straight ahead. “But I hadn’t realized it was this bad. No wonder Saint Eusebius wants to leave.”
V
For the next twenty minutes, we had to give all our attention to our horses, keeping them at a slow walk as the steep road wound and twisted its way down the side of the valley. The road leveled out at last, and we rode back toward the grove at the head of the valley, parallel to the road we had followed at the top of the cliffs. There were some stone huts near the road, but we saw no people. A few goats, feeding in the meadows along the merrily running stream, lifted their head to look at us in surprise-apparently travelers to the Holy Grove were not all that frequent. The air was fresh and cool, the valley and the trees intensely lovely.
“Can’t you, as the bishop’s representative, just make them stop?” I ventured at last.
Joachim shook his head. “As long as they do not impede the free access of the faithful to the Holy Grove and the saint’s relics, they’re not actually doing anything sinful. It’s shameful, of course, to be trying to make money from Saint Eusebius as though he were a two-headed calf at a fair, but it isn’t evil or even against church law. But if the saint was ‘fed up’ to begin with, this must make him furious.”
He shot me a quick, worried glance. “I’d assumed that we, the bishop and I, would try to persuade those priests two hundred miles away that they had no right to the saint’s holy relics. Now I’m not so sure. And it may be difficult to break that news to the hermit.”
As we rode, the sound of rushing water became louder and louder in front of us. We came around a corner to see a waterfall, white water splashing in the sunlight. Long grass and dark green ferns festooned the edges of the falls.
At the top of the falls I could see a small level area, dense with trees. Beyond the trees, the white cliff face rose abruptly. My eyes traveled up it to the top. That was where we had stood, looking down; the cliff appeared even higher and steeper from below than it had from above.
Looking to the right I was able to spot the steps that had been cut into the cliff for a quicker descent than we and the horses had taken. They were still little more than toeholds, in spite of the entrepreneurs’ “improvements.” Here, presumably, was where they were planning to set up a pulley and a basket to lower the pious if less agile pilgrim-and the adventurous tourist.
“If you don’t mind,” said Joachim, “I’d like to introduce you to the hermit. He and I will have a lot to discuss after that, but you might be interested in trying to find the wood nymph.”
We tied our horses’ reins to a branch and scrambled up a steep track at the side of the waterfall. At the top, the stream emerged from the dark shadow of a grove of trees. We continued along its edge, ducking our heads where the branches swung low. Here the water course widened into a swirling pool. In a few more yards, I saw what seemed to be a stone hut, like those we had seen further down the valley.
But I was more interested in the river. When Joachim had spoken of its source, I had visualized a spring where water gurgled up from the earth, and I was wondering how the river could carry so much water and so rapidly. I went a little further, with Joachim following, and then spotted the real source.
The river did not gurgle up from the earth but rather poured out of the face of the cliff. A cave mouth, only a few feet high but at least twenty feet broad, opened in the limestone, and the water boiled from it. A faint but steady wind accompanied the rushing river. After emerging and making a quick eddy under the branches of the grove, the water rushed over the edge of the falls and disappeared on down the valley.
“Has anyone ever gone into the cave to follow the river back further?” I asked. There seemed to be a low, damp ledge along one side of the river, along which it might be possible to walk or crawl.
“I don’t think so. The cave’s too small, and there’s too much water,” said Joachim absently. We walked back to the stone hut, and he went down on one knee before it, dropping his head reverently.
I saw then that it was not merely a hut, but that the side toward us contained a stone altar, only partially protected from the elements by protruding stone walls. Next to the rough wooden crucifix on the altar was a reliquary, a shining box where the saint’s relics would be kept. From where I stood, it looked as though it was made of pure gold. It was indubitably made in the shape of a giant toe.
I hung back, having no intention of going down on my knees before the preserved toe of a long-dead saint who had not even had the sense to ask a wizard for help against a dragon.
Joachim rose again after a minute. At the same time, I caught a flicker of motion in the shadows beyond the hut. I turned toward it quickly, hoping it was the great horned rabbit-or, even better, the wood nymph.
Instead it was an old man in a coarse brown robe that reached to his ankles. Below the robe, his feet were bare; I noticed that he himself had very large and horny toes.
This, then, was the hermit. My eyes had become adjusted to the dim light in the grove, and I could see that the hut, beyond the altar, would make an adequate shelter for someone who had deliberately given up comfort. The old hermit had a ropy beard that reached nearly to his knees and a beatific smile that he turned on both of us.
“Greetings, my son,” he said to me, and “Bless me, Father,” to Joachim and knelt before him.
Joachim blessed him in evident embarrassment and helped him back to his feet. “I should rather kneel to you, Father,” he said. “Priests who are busy with the sins and affairs of the world have much to learn from hermits whose days are spent in contemplation and prayer.”
The hermit looked at him more closely. “You’re the Royal Chaplain, aren’t you? I thought I recognized you.”
Joachim beckoned to me. “Let me present Daimbert, Royal Wizard of Yurt and my close friend.”
Mollified at being called the chaplain’s close friend, I made the hermit the full formal bow, first the dipping of the head, then the wide-spread arms, finishing by dropping to both knees. I reassured myself that to kneel in this way to a living holy hermit, as a wizard might to a superior wizard or to his king, would not be a discredit to the position of institutionalized magic. Besides, Joachim looked pleased.
“Have you come to see the wood nymph?” the hermit asked me. I rose and met his eyes. I had somehow expected them to be distant and dreamy, but they were surprisingly sharp under long, shaggy eyebrows.