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?
“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
Joachim told him briefly what had happened, Evrard tidily winding the thread back up while we walked. I tried addressing him sternly, mind to mind, but he now had his thoughts well shielded. I shrugged and gave it up. We knew at any rate that the monster was still deep within the cave.
Back in the valley, the three priests were grumpily packing, preparing to go. There was no sign of the hermit or his apprentices.
“I think we’d better go too,” I said. “I need to get back to the royal castle, to bury my predecessor as quickly as possible.”
“It’s already late,” said Joachim. “We can’t possibly make it there tonight.”
“I am leaving this valley,” I said as distinctly as I could. “I can use the magic light to show our way after dark.”
The chaplain looked at me in assessment and shook his head. “You’re already exhausted, in body and in spirit. And even your magic staff won’t cast enough light for the horses. Let’s go to the duchess’s castle tonight, and on to the royal castle tomorrow.”
As we all rode down the valley, the wizard’s coffin strapped to the priests’ pack horse, I wondered uneasily if my desire to be free at last of the valley had distorted my judgment. I had stayed in the valley even when I knew my duty as a wizard was to go in search of the monster. Now I had a duty both to bury my predecessor at home and to catch the monster here, and my strongest drive was to get out the valley, not necessarily because it was the best choice, but because I had been unable to do so before.
I told myself that a saint who could summon lightning from a clear sky would not let a creature of magic and bone hurt those who served his shrine, that the monster might now wander aimlessly in the cave for weeks. But I also told myself that barring miracles, and miracles by their very nature could not be counted on, religion was primarily useful for dealing with the supernatural and the hereafter. The priests might try to explain to wizards the deep metaphysical significance of the forces of the material universe, but they always seemed to leave us with the full responsibility for dealing with those forces.
Evrard and I rode in front, and as we started up the steep road a tree branch before us suddenly dipped. For a second we saw the wood nymph, who smiled and gave us a cheerful wave before disappearing again among the leaves.
