This was probably supposed to be comforting. I nodded, took a deep breath, and turned to the thin priest. "Why did you want me here?"
He took a breath of his own. "Well. We need to determine the desire of the saint, to see if it is his will to return with us to the city where he first made his holy profession." The priest glanced quickly toward Joachim. "The royal chaplain thought it was important that you be here." He didn't add, "God knows why," but he might as well have.
The hermit, who had not yet said anything, suddenly spoke up. "The saint is very fond of this young wizard." We all turned toward him, priests, apprentices, and wizards. "I didn't mention this before to anyone but the royal chaplain," he said with his gentle smile, "but the saint appeared to me in a vision last night. He had me send my daughter, the wood nymph, to look for him."
I staggered for a second with amazement, then felt Evrard's hand under my elbow and regained my balance. My prayers had been answered after all. This was so unexpected that I had to fight my initial impulse to say, "No, wait, I didn't mean it!"
This, then, explained the strange sense I had had that someone else had directed my path the last few hours in the cave. Someone else indeed had. But, being unaccustomed to listening to saints, I had only turned to his guidance when faced with a clear choice between different tunnels. Voices could have spoken for some time in my mind without making me look up to see the crack that led to freedom. That had needed the voice of the wood nymph.
"I see," I said, which sounded highly inadequate.
But then I had another thought that made me as irritated with the saint as I had been overwhelmingly grateful a moment before. If Eusebius could save me from wandering to my death in the cave, why had he done nothing to save the old wizard? I leaned against Evrard, frustrated enough with all priests and saints that any wizard, even a marginally competent one, was exactly who I wanted beside me.
"Then perhaps it is indeed best for you to be here, Wizard," said the thin priest grudgingly. "After all, as Holy Scripture tells us, a little child shall lead them."
I had no attention to spare him or to feel insulted. I didn't know what the saints' plan might be, in which I appeared to feature prominently, but I felt a deep and unshakeable determination not to become a pawn in someone else's program. I would not be turned by gratitude into anyone else's creature, not even a saint's. I had more than motive force; I had a mind and a soul, and they were still my own.
Evrard interrupted my thoughts. "Are you all right?" he asked in a low voice, his blue eyes worried. "Can I get you some water or something?"
"Yes, that would be good." I sat down with my back against a tree, drank the cup he brought me, and closed my eyes. I sent up a brief prayer, so that Saint Eusebius would know I really was properly grateful. The wizard had said at the end that he was glad I had never become obsequious. Well, I hoped that whatever characteristics had endeared me to a cranky old wizard had also endeared me to a cranky saint, because I had no intention of becoming obsequious to someone who let a monster roam his valley, killing respectable wizards.
I opened my eyes to see all the priests and apprentices clustered around. "Listen," I said. Something had just become obvious to me.
They turned toward me with surprising respect. I stood up on legs that trembled for a moment, then found enough strength to step forward. "This whole problem started when the entrepreneurs first put a booth on top of the cliff, inviting people to see the Holy Toe for a fee. I know why they're there."
And I did know. It had come to me not in voices, not through revelation, but through my own reasoning powers. The saint, I thought, had been confident that I would find this answer, and indeed hoped in addition that I would pass judgment, make the final decision of right and wrong. I had no intention of doing the latter. If I was barely competent as a wizard, a regent, and a judge, I was even less qualified to be a religious arbiter.
But the first was important. "This may pain you," I said to the old hermit, "but they meant it for the best. Come here," to the leader of the apprentices.
He came toward me slowly but not reluctantly, as though he had been expecting this and was determined to go through with it bravely. He even managed a certain dignity in spite of his rags and badly-shaved head.
The round priest started to speak but I turned my back on him, addressing myself only to the young hermit.
"The first time the chaplain and I came here," I said gently, "you apprentices asked us if we had been sent by the bishop to take your master away—because of the entrepreneurs on top of the cliff. As I should have realized at the time, it was very odd that you might think that the bishop would hold an old hermit responsible for some disreputable entrepreneurs.
"And then the ducal wizard and I came to this valley to see the wood nymph, and he and I asked you more about them. All you would say then was that you weren't sure if your master, the hermit, had discussed their enterprise with the saint. Your unwilling ness to talk about them contrasted strangely, I should have realized, with your master's quite open conversation when he and I spoke two days later.
"So far, you've kept it from him, and I'm sure you felt you had very good reasons. Now I'm not going to accuse you or sit in judgment on you. But you do need to tell us all. Why did you apprentices invite those people to come make money off the Holy Toe?"
VI
In the ensuing confusion, I went back to sit under the tree again, to make it clear I was not passing judgment. The story came out somewhat incoherently, with the other apprentices hurrying to confess that they too were at fault, to say that it was their love and concern for the hermit that had led them into error, and at last to fall prone before him and beg his forgiveness in voices racked by sobs.
The saint, I thought, could not have revealed this to the hermit himself, because the hermit might have refused to speak out against his apprentices. I presumed it was a compliment to my reasoning abilities that Eusebius had not felt it necessary to tell anyone else about this in a vision.
The story was fairly simple when the apprentices had finally told it all. They were worried about their master, who always gave them his last crusts even when he did not have enough himself. They were worried about the rather erratic appearance of pilgrims with offerings of food or coins and distressed because their own agricultural abilities had not progressed much further than goats and lettuce, although this spring they had planted a lentil crop for which they still had high hopes. When, earlier in the spring, a merchant traveler had detoured by the valley and asked for hospitality for the night, they had been more than willing to listen to his proposals.
The thought of obtaining a small but steady cut of the entrepreneurs' profits, of perhaps seeing more pilgrims once their shrine's fame began to spread, had been enormously appealing. It was only later, when they found that they were afraid to admit to the hermit what they had done, that they had realized they were trying to make money off the holy things of God.
But by this time their merchant contact had recruited Prince Dominic himself as a backer, and the apprentice hermits had felt unable to back out. This then was why the saint, after fifteen centuries, had begun to think of leaving the valley. Knowing that one of the apprentices would probably replace the old hermit at the Holy Shrine within a few years would have made even a less cranky saint irritated.
The apprentices had apparently made their peace with the hermit. Their leader rose, his face tear-streaked. "I'll go tell them now," he said. Refusing the priests' offer of a horse, he walked quickly toward the cliff and began to climb.
All of us fell silent, watching him. Although the trees of the grove hid much of his ascent, his small figure kept emerging into sight, climbing steadily up the white cliff face. I had a sudden fear of the monster bursting out of the cave and following him, but nothing of the sort happened.
The apprentice reached the top and disappeared. We waited for another ten minutes, then he put his head over the edge and waved, which could have meant anything
, and started down again.
This was all Dominic's fault, I thought, though I wasn't going to say so. If he hadn't been willing to accept a cut of the profits, he would have turned these entrepreneurs out of the kingdom long before the saint decided he had to leave.
Twice while we waited, the thin priest said, "Well, since that mystery is solved—" but the hermit always silenced him with a smile.
The apprentice was back at last, tired and sober. "No one was there," he said. "But I wrote a message on a piece of paper I ripped out of the back of a booklet on the life of Saint Eusebius." I myself would have wondered if it was sacrilegious to do so; that the apprentice had not hesitated told me more than anything he had already said of his real attitude toward the entrepreneurs.
"I left it at the booth," he went on, "weighted down with a figurine of a dragon. They must be nearby, though they didn't answer when I called."
"And what did you say in your message?" asked the round priest.
"I told them that we had all sinned against God and that this enterprise must be ended at once."
"Come here, my son," said the hermit. "You have indeed sinned, but God will wipe away the tears of the truly repentant." He blessed him and gave all his apprentices the kiss of the peace, while the priests from the city fidgeted.
"I think now," the hermit said, still smiling, "that there can be no question of removing Saint Eusebius from the grove where he himself served God and where hermits have served that same Lord ever since."
"We shall see," said the round priest in notes of self-importance.
The three priests from the city, accompanied by Joachim, brought out candles and a censer and began arranging them around the shrine. They lit the candles, and the youngest priest began to swing the censer. The pungent smell of incense drifted through the grove.
The thin priest went down on his knees before the golden reliquary of the Holy Toe. "Oh, blessed Eusebius!" he called, as loudly as though the saint were up in the top of a tree with the wood nymph. "Listen to our prayers, we beseech thee! We seek to do thy will, in Christ's name, but thy will has not yet been fully revealed to us. Show us a sign! Show us thy intention! Show us—"
A sharp crack rent the air, stopping the priest in mid-speech. I leaped up, convinced that the sound had been made by the monster, coming with its new mouth to eat us all.
But it was instead the sign the priest had asked for. A second later, thunder rolled across the cloudless sky, and we looked up to see smoke beginning to rise from the edge of the cliff. Lightning from heaven had set fire to the entrepreneurs' windlass.
The thin priest, still on his knees, stared dumbfounded, as I'm sure I did as well. The Cranky Saint was beginning to be a little too active for my taste.
"I do hope those poor misguided souls had not invested too much in their figurines," said the old hermit mildly.
Joachim appeared to be almost transfigured by the sight, and it took a minute for the three priests to recover their equilibrium. They did not seem to have expected anything this dramatic.
"This means—" blurted out the youngest priest.
But the thin priest silenced him at once. "It means the saint has listened to our poor prayers," he said. "This has become a valley of sinful activities, of those who have perverted Christ's pure purpose," which seemed a little harsh on the apprentices, considering that the hermit had just forgiven them and promised them God's forgiveness.
"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?"
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