at the shrine by now and left, but the apprentices would know where they had gone. At the moment I could not plan what to do next, indeed could think no further than collapsing into sleep, but I managed to tell myself sternly that at some point, very soon, I would indeed have to do something.
I was just thinking that the apprentices had already had enough trouble with strangers at the shrine without me waking them up this early, when I saw a yellow glow flick into existence. Someone had lit a fire.
I dropped to the ground in front of the hut where the fire burned, tried to speak, and managed only a parched croak on the first attempt but a passable “Hello?” on the second.
I expected one of the apprentices, but the figure that appeared at the hut door was dressed in black linen. It was Joachim.
He looked almost as overjoyed to see me as I was to see him. But he did not say anything at first, only pulled me into the hut. I let him lower me and the old wizard’s body to the dirt floor and press a cup of water into my hand.
In spite of the nearly euphoric sense of relief, drinking the water gave me enough of my senses back to remind me how thoroughly I had failed.
“He’s dead, Joachim,” I said, although the chaplain had doubtless determined this for himself. “I couldn’t save him. And the monster is still somewhere in the cave-unless it’s found its own way out.”
“The monster has not come out into the valley again,” said Joachim with a sober look toward me. “Thank God one of you is back alive.” The kettle of water he had put on the fire began to steam, and he turned to pour it into a teapot. “Drink some tea as soon as it’s brewed, and I’ll say the last rites for him.”
Between sorrow and despair, I gulped down the tea, feeling it heating my throat and chest all the way down. A second cup, I thought, would finish taking the cold of the cave off me.
But sleep caught me in the act of reaching for the teapot. I slumped back against the hut wall, my eyes closing against the dawn light, just hearing Joachim’s voice softly speaking the words of the liturgy as I fell into unconsciousness.
V
When I awoke it was full daylight, and Evrard was sitting beside me. I lay motionless for a moment, conscious of the heavy wool of a horse blanket spread over me and tickling my chin, but otherwise almost devoid of sensation. All my limbs would start to complain, I knew, as soon as I tried to move, but if I remained still forever this would not be a problem.
But I was now the senior wizard in Yurt, and there was still a magical creature on the loose, one that had killed a man. I forced myself to sit up and immediately felt so weak that I almost collapsed again.
“Good morning,” said Evrard. “You look terrible.”
“I feel terrible,” I agreed. I leaned against the wall and rubbed my temples. At least the headache was virtually gone, but I was horribly hungry. “I don’t think I’ve had anything much to eat for the last week, except for berries.”
Evrard produced bread and cheese and a rather wizened apple. “This is about the end of the food the three priests brought with them.” So the priests were still here after all.
I ate ravenously, thinking that I had never properly appreciated the meals in the royal castle. Then, no longer feeling I was about to faint, I pushed the horse blanket away and staggered to my feet.
“You’re covered with blood!” cried Evrard in dismay.
I glanced down at myself. My clothes were indeed filthy, ripped, and stained with quantities of blood. “Not my own,” I said. “The old wizard’s.” But then I looked around in panic. “Where is he? Where have they taken him?”
“They took his body up to the shrine,” said Evrard, not entirely as though he approved but not wanting to disapprove either. “The apprentice hermits and the youngest of those priests were all going to wash the body and lay it out.”
“We’ll have to take him back to the royal castle and bury him in the graveyard there,” I said. “Evrard, the monster killed him. And it’s still loose, probably stronger than ever. It has a real face now.”
“Your chaplain told me you hadn’t been able to catch it,” he said in a low voice, as though afraid to suggest that he was belittling my efforts.
But I knew perfectly well I had failed, failed to catch the monster and to save the old wizard. I had to accept that now.
“I can’t go up to the shrine like this,” I said. “See if I have enough spare clothes in my saddlebag to keep me decent.”
I walked down to the river, peeled the rags from my body, and slid into the water. It was as cold as the cave, but bubbling beneath the brilliantly blue summer sky the water was only invigorating. I splashed and tried to rub off the worst of the grime and blood, then let myself sink to the river bottom. It was not deep enough for swimming, but lying on the stones two feet beneath the surface, with my eyes open, I could see the green and white of the valley walls transformed into rippling slabs of color.
I jerked back to the surface, caught my breath, and pulled myself up on the bank. Evrard had found me some clothes; I rolled on the grass to dry myself and pulled them on. For a minute I sat quietly, letting the sun beat on my wet hair, enjoying the fleeting sensation of peace.
“I’m trying to decide,” I said then, “if we dare leave the valley while the monster’s still in the cave. The old wizard said that he knew his creature would be drawn here, so it may not be able to get out. I would appear horribly disrespectful if I didn’t attend the old wizard’s funeral.”
“Maybe it’s lost forever in the cave,” suggested Evrard.
“The creature can’t see in there, certainly,” I said, “and the cave itself is a labyrinth.”
“It’s terribly easy to get confused,” Evrard agreed, “even with torches and a thread to find your way out.” When I looked at him questioningly he added, “Didn’t the chaplain tell you? When you and the old wizard hadn’t come back by yesterday morning, he and I spent much of the day trying to find you. We unraveled my old tunic for thread.” I noticed then that Evrard, too, had been improved by a change into spare clothing. “We didn’t know which tunnel you’d taken off the large chamber, which made it difficult. I’d hoped you’d have left a magic mark to show where you’d gone, but if so you didn’t use any spell I know.”
I was touched that Evrard and Joachim had looked for us and wished that I myself had had the sense to unravel a thread as I went. “I’m sorry! I did use magic marks, but not until we were well into the cave. I only wanted to mark the way back out, even though, as it turned out, I missed some of them and became lost anyway. I never thought anyone would try to come after us.”
“We started by exploring the tunnels closest to the river, but they all went underwater very quickly, or else became so small that we knew you wouldn’t have been able to go through, unless of course you transformed yourselves into frogs.”
“In fact, we left the great chamber by a passage on the farthest side-it’s a wide, fairly straight way, at least at first.”
Evrard shook his head. “We never got there.”
I stood up carefully. “Even if we had dared transform ourselves into frogs, in the knowledge that our croaks would not be able to approximate the Hidden Language and that we’d have to be frogs forever, we wouldn’t have needed to. The monster is human size, and all we were trying to do was catch it.”
“Could you have summoned it, forced it to come to you?” asked Evrard, falling into step beside me as I started toward the grove. I had brought the old wizard’s staff and leaned on it when even the short walk began to tire me. “Maybe a true summoning spell rather than the more general calling spell that got me all those sparrows?”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t have done any good to summon its mind if its body couldn’t follow. And you know they always taught us that to summon a human mind, against its will, was the greatest sin a wizard could commit. I don’t know about you, but the teachers refused even to teach us the spell.” I and a few other young wizards had managed, on a late-night expedition to the Master’s study, to get around that prohibition, but I didn’t want to mention this.
