“We’re delighted you’re feeling better,” said Zahlfast briskly. “Now that your telephones are working, I hope you realize you should call us if you run into any other problems this serious. I hadn’t realized you’d take my warning against calling the school for every little problem so literally!”
I nodded glumly.
“Though I must say I should have credited you with more courage than I did,” Zahlfast continued. “Most wizards wouldn’t have gone down alone to face a demon, even those who did a lot better on the demonology exam than I happen to know you did. I hope you aren’t going to turn into one of those rash young wizards who think of themselves of indestructible.”
There didn’t seem to be much danger of that. I had never expected to have a second chance at life, and I knew I would never get a third.
“Just remember you’re a wizard,” said the old Master. “Don’t start relying too much on the priests.”
“This makes it all very symmetrical,” I said. “The bishop is worried about my possible evil influence on the chaplain.”
The two glanced at each other. “Coming close to death doesn’t seem to have changed you very much,” said Zahlfast.
I had noticed the same thing myself. One might have hoped that if I came back from the dead I’d come back better, but I was too happy to be back at all to care.
The old Master looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “I hope you realize we are very glad to have you still alive. In a few weeks, after all of you here have had a chance to repair some of the damage to the castle, we’ll send up some wizards from the technical division. They’ll take down the details of how you put the spells on your telephones so we can start putting far-seeing attachments on other instruments.”
After watching them fly away, I sat on a bench in the courtyard for a few minutes to catch my breath, wondering how soon the new edition of
He was sitting in his room, finishing breakfast. “Thank you again for interceding with the saints for me,” I said, sitting down and breathing hard. “I’ve just been seeing off the wizards; they’re on their way back to the school. But I wanted to find out if you’d spoken to the Lady Maria.”
“Yes, I spoke to her yesterday. I told you I would.”
When he seemed unwilling to continue, I said with an exasperated laugh, “What is this, Joachim, the secrets of the human soul that a priest can never reveal? Since I realized she’d sold her soul to the devil long before either you or she did, and then got myself killed negotiating for her soul, I should at least be able to find out what she’s going to do now that her soul is safe again.”
Joachim looked at me gravely a moment, then slowly started to smile. “You’re right this time; but I may have difficulty explaining this to the bishop.
“She had worked much of it out for herself already,” he continued after a brief pause. “So when I sent her a message to come to my room, she had a good guess what I was going to say. She seemed to have the strangest idea, however, of how to act in such a situation. She came in as though she were a naughty schoolgirl caught in some mischief.”
I could have told her this would never work with Joachim. It wouldn’t even work with me.
“But it all seemed to be a facade, behind which she was genuinely terrified and repentant at what she had done. Even though she kept referring to the demon as a ‘little magic man,’ she realized how close she had come to damning her soul for eternity. She agreed at once when I explained to her that a few years of vain youth and beauty in this world could never be worth an eternity in hell. She had also had a chance to realize that asking to ‘see a dragon’ was not the innocuous request she had originally imagined.
“In fact,” continued Joachim, looking somewhat uncomfortable, “once she stopped pretending she thought of it as a naughty joke gone wrong, she broke down and sobbed. I was trying to impress on her the need to beg God’s forgiveness, and she kept on asking if I thought you would ever forgive her.”
“I hope you told her I would.”
“I told her that you were not angry with her personally, that you had been willing to die to save both her and the kingdom because you were following the high purposes of God.”
Joachim’s black eyes were completely sober, and I began to wonder uneasily if he was going to start treating me with the awe and reserve that everyone else in the castle seemed to be demonstrating. Of course, in his case it was harder to tell. But it was no use coming back from the dead if I then spent the next two hundred years being treated like some saint. In the next few days, I would have to think of something outrageous to do to remind everyone that it was, after all, only me.
“I did warn her very sternly against further experiments with pentagrams.”
“I’m sure you did,” I said, “and I’m sure you imposed some suitable penance on her. You don’t need to tell me about that-that really should be a matter kept secret between a sinner and her priest.” I changed the subject abruptly because I did not want to talk about the Lady Maria anymore; I was just glad that he had spoken with her, so I didn’t have to. “But tell me, Joachim, how do you do it?”
He lifted his eyebrows at me.
“First you saved the king’s life and then you saved mine. I want to know how you do it. It can’t be a very common ability. Everybody seems in awe of me for being alive, whereas they really ought to be in awe of you for having worked a miracle.”
“Prayer is available to anyone,” he said, more soberly than ever, “who calls on God with a contrite heart. I already told you that the saints had pity and mercy on you for your sacrifice. It had nothing to do with me.”
I considered suggesting that in that case maybe I had been sent back to this world because neither heaven nor hell wanted me in the next, but decided not to. Joachim had limits.
He was still looking at me, as though in assessment. “You yourself don’t seem to be taking spiritual issues as seriously as one might expect.”
I was glad I had not spoken. “But I
Joachim took a slow, deep breath. He had leaned his chin on his hand, so I couldn’t see his mouth, but I could swear from his eyes that he was smiling.
VI
Gwen came in at that point to get Joachim’s breakfast tray, and she gave a little jump, as though remembering the last time she had found us together like this.
“It’s all right, Gwen,” I reassured her. “Neither of us is going anywhere.” She rushed back out, clutching the tray, without a word.
Since we had been interrupted anyway, I stood up to thank Joachim again and to go back to my chambers. I was still weak, and my head was beginning to ache badly. But I wanted to go to lunch with everyone else today-the cook had been sending very small meals to my room, apparently not realizing that someone who has been miraculously restored to life needs to eat a lot, and she hadn’t even given me any Christmas cookies. A little nap before lunch, I thought, was just what I needed.
But as I reached for the handle to my chambers, I felt a hand on my arm and turned around to face the duchess. “Can I come in for a moment?”
“Well, my lady, I was just going to lie down-”
“I won’t keep you a minute,” she said, stepping inside before I could protest further. I wondered what had become of awe and respect just when I needed them. “But I’m about to go home, and I couldn’t leave without finding out what really happened.”
I noticed then that she was dressed for travel, in tall boots and a heavy cloak, and as she shut the door behind her I could see the stable boys starting to bring out the horses.
