ago, and he certainly should have been back to the castle by last night. Yet you say he wasn’t.”
“What do you think has happened to him?”
“Maybe the old wizard put a spell on him. Or maybe the wizard’s monster escaped, and Dominic set off after it and hasn’t been able to catch it.”
“I told you I wanted your counsel,” said Joachim quietly. “I’ve been trying to find a tactful way to say this, because I don’t want to seem to accuse you of neglecting your responsibilities.” Maybe associating with the priests, who had even less tact than he did, was teaching him some at last. “But your predecessor’s creature has gotten loose.”
“It has?” I forced myself to say, in a voice that sounded loud and squeaky in my own ears. It was one thing to fear such a possibility, another to know it had actually happened.
“We heard of it today as we were riding toward this valley. The first word we had was in the village just a few miles from the castle.” This would have been the same village from which the disputants had come, not long before the king left Yurt. It seemed years ago.
“The local priest came out to meet us, terrified. Something had come to the village yesterday. It was seen rummaging through a chicken house. They thought of course it was a thief and set the dogs on it.”
Somehow hearing this in Joachim’s quiet voice made it worse.
“But the dogs wouldn’t attack it and fled with their tails between their legs. By now they’d realized it wasn’t just a common thief. Someone shot at it, though the priest told us that he, of course, tried to stop him. But it didn’t make any difference. The creature walked off with three arrows stuck in its back.”
Then even Nimrod might not be able to stop it.
“It killed five chickens.”
“Five chickens,” I repeated, thinking I should be grateful it was not five children.
“They belonged to a young couple, who, I gather, had just set up housekeeping. I think I recognized them. The young woman was very blond, quite distinctive-looking. I believe they were among the disputants the king swore to peace.”
King Haimeric’s judgment, I thought bleakly, had brought them back together after what had probably been a major rift, but no sooner were they married then a monster had killed their chickens. A monster loose, I reminded myself, while the Royal Wizard of Yurt was engrossed in dreamy forgetfulness with the wood nymph.
“I guessed immediately it was the creature that you and the ducal wizard had seen,” said Joachim. “But the village priest thought it might have been a demon.” He gave me a sideways look. “You would have been proud of me. I told him that magic is not a supernatural force, and that our best defense against a magical creature was to find a reliable wizard.”
There were three wizards in the kingdom of Yurt at the moment, and none of them reliable. Just a few days ago, the old wizard had appeared to have his creature very thoroughly imprisoned.
“There didn’t seem to be anything we priests could do,” Joachim continued, “so we went on. As you can imagine, I was even more eager than before to find you.”
And where, all this time, was Dominic? “Did the villagers have any indication which direction it was heading?”
“The third village in which it was seen is located at the base of the plateau,” said Joachim soberly. “It seems to be heading this way.”
I was furious with myself. I had seen it in the wizard’s cottage, seen it and been terrified of it, but I had persuaded both myself and Joachim that it was safely constrained by the old wizard’s magic. But I had not thought through what I had already had good reason to know: that the old wizard had lost control: of his mind, his soul, his good sense, or his magic.
It would be ironic if now, when I had at last persuaded Joachim that wizardry was not just an inferior and misapprehended version of religion, and he and the old hermit both turned to me for aid, my magic turned out to be completely useless.
Evrard, in spite of taking Elerius’s course, was not going to be any help. If the old wizard’s monster was even as good at hiding as Evrard’s stick-creature, then I would need Nimrod, but he was camped somewhere between here and the royal castle, and I’d never find him in the dark. I was more than ready to swallow my pride and ask for the school’s assistance, in spite of how my predecessor would react, but I was thirty miles from the nearest telephone and over five miles from the nearest pigeon loft.
I raised my eyes and found Joachim watching me soberly. “You could try praying for guidance,” he suggested.
I restrained myself from saying that that no saint would listen to a wizard. But his comment did give me an idea and, very briefly, hope. “Saint Eusebius,” I said. “The Cranky Saint won’t want a magical undead monster in his valley. The saint must like you, or he wouldn’t have appeared to you in the first place. Maybe he’ll listen if you ask for his help.”
“I constantly ask the saints for their help,” said Joachim.
I considered asking Evrard’s question, why the saint hadn’t just blasted the entrepreneurs-and, by extension, the wizard’s monster- with lightning if he didn’t like them, but it seemed pointless.
Besides, it was only a guess that the entrepreneurs even bothered the saint. His cryptic demand to have his relics moved elsewhere could be based on almost anything-even a personal animosity toward the apprentice hermits. I wondered for a moment that if the saint didn’t want to go with the three priests, he might show it by allowing the monster to eat them, but even I had to dismiss this thought as irreverent.
But maybe Joachim’s prayers would keep the monster at bay until first light, when Evrard or I could fly back to the telephone at the royal castle without becoming hopelessly lost. “You told me the old wizard might have made his creature out of jealous pride,” I said. “Having made it, do you think he set it loose intentionally? Is he trying to catch it himself, or in trying to catch it will I have to fight him as well?”
“That I cannot tell you,” said Joachim.
One thing I could not do tonight was sleep. I leaned my chin on my fist and tried to plan for tomorrow. If the monster did not appear in the valley tonight, then I would have to go looking for it. The fire had burned low, but the coals still glowed deep red.
Very early, I decided, I would fly out of the valley and find Nimrod, and then he and I would track the creature from where it had last been seen. First, though, I would roust Evrard out of the wood nymph’s tree, whether he liked it or not, and send him back to the royal castle as fast as he could fly, to telephone the school. Then he could start the search for Dominic from the old wizard’s house-and, for that matter, for the old wizard himself. This implied, of course, that they weren’t all lying dead there already.
I paused at this point in my deliberations, wondering if Evrard could fly that far. I knew I couldn’t have when I first came to Yurt.
Joachim, who had been silent for several minutes, abruptly stirred, then rolled up in his blanket. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“I can’t. Not with a monster loose. I must not have made this completely clear, Joachim, but the monster’s escape-and, from what you said about the old wizard’s jealousy, its very existence-are my fault. I have to find a way to stop it.”
“You still need your sleep.”
“No,” I said obstinately. “You and I have often sat up most of the night, talking, and I’m always fine the next day.”
“That is, you can still function,” said Joachim mildly, leaning on an elbow and looking at me, “thanks to a spell that you’ve told me gives you a bad headache.”
The problem was that the chaplain knew me too well.
“Lie down and close your eyes,” said Joachim, as though he were my grandmother, twenty years ago, tucking me into bed when I didn’t want to go. “I’ll sing you a hymn to make you sleepy.”
I lay down obediently, knowing this wouldn’t work. But I tried concentrating on the sound of his voice as he sang softly. Joachim had a very pleasant baritone. After a few minutes, I couldn’t hear him any more. I opened my eyes to find that it was already morning.
