our baggage, and I don’t like the looks of that wound.” We started to object that it was too late, but he shook his head. “I’ve got eyes like a cat. There has to be a village somewhere on this mountain with a competent doctor. Don’t expect me before morning.” He was gone with a rattle of loose gravel under his boots before anyone could speak again.
It was a long night. Maintaining the lifting spell required all my concentration, especially as I became more and more tired. The others took turns watching and feeding the fire. At one point Joachim woke up again and started to speak, very softly. I tried to respond, but found it too difficult to talk and work magic at the same time. Then it became clear that he didn’t really need a response, that he was telling of events that had happened long, long, ago, when he was still the oldest son of a merchant in the luxury trade, before he had even thought of becoming a priest. I hoped he would tell me these stories again some time when I could listen properly.
In the darkest, stillest part of the night he suddenly said, much more clearly than he had said anything for some time, “You can let me down, Daimbert. I’m very grateful for your help, but you’re exhausted, and man is not sustained by magic alone.”
I was too tired to argue. I set him down with cloaks both under and over him, got him some water, and fell immediately into sleep so deep as to be untroubled by visions or dreams.
Several hours later I was awakened by the sound of his voice. It was still soft but it had, indescribably, changed.
I pushed myself to a sitting position. It was shortly before dawn, and although I could see our campsite clearly, everything looked unreal and slightly ill. On the far side of the fire, Dominic nodded at me, but the king and Hugo were huddled together under a single cloak.
“It’s no use, Claudia,” said Joachim, very quietly. His eyes were closed, and his chest was rising and falling rapidly. “I wish you wouldn’t cry. This is hard enough for me as it is. You’ll always be in my prayers.”
I jerked around, fully awake. Yellowish blood was slowly seeping from under the bandage on Joachim’s neck, and his face was flushed. I put my hand on his, and he patted it with his other hand. “There, I knew you’d understand. I’ve been called to the service of God. It is a great and terrible calling, and there is only one way to answer.”
“He’s becoming delirious,” I said to Dominic. “I wish Ascelin and the doctor would hurry.”
Dominic brought me some water in the belt buckle we were using for a cup, and Joachim managed to drink it though he gave me a puzzled look. He might not even recognize me.
Ascelin finally returned in midmorning, haggard and accompanied by a shriveled little man on horseback. “All right, you promised me the second half of my fee as soon as we arrived,” he said even before dismounting. Ascelin scowled but paid him.
“All right,” said the doctor somewhat less reluctantly. “Is this the patient? What have you all been doing, fighting with other ruffians? You’d think a priest would know better than to get involved with the likes of you.”
Ascelin shook his head at us behind the doctor’s back. This looked like a conversation they had already had several times on the way up the mountain.
“All right, let’s see this wound.” The doctor peeled away the bandage with practiced fingers. Joachim winced as he touched the spot but kept his eyes closed. “Infected, as I feared. And I don’t need to tell you about infection this close to the brain. The knife was certainly dirty, possibly even poisoned, though I doubt it.” He seemed almost to be enjoying himself as he poked around in his saddle-bag for various ointments. “A good thing you thought to clean the wound right away, or he might be dead already.”
I stared at him. “He’s not- He’s not going to die, is he?”
The doctor glanced up at me from smearing something out of a jar into the wound. “You’re a wizard, aren’t you? All right, maybe you should try some of your magic. I think I’ve done all that medicine can do.” He rose briskly, rebuckled his saddle-bag, and mounted.
“Thank you for coming,” said Ascelin somewhat tardily as he rode away.
I grabbed the tall prince by the arm. “He’s not going to die, is he?” I asked again, more desperately.
“I hope not,” said Ascelin in a low voice. “I just wish those bandits hadn’t gotten everything. What I don’t know is whether they intended to kill him as well as steal the Black Pearl from him, or whether they sliced his throat essentially by accident. I did manage to buy a few things in the village.” I realized then that he was holding a kettle, packed with blankets and food. “You can have your breastplate back, Hugo.”
I sat down again by Joachim and took his hand. He did not respond. “Please don’t die,” I told him. The doctor might speak brightly of using wizardry, but magic had never had much effect over the earth’s natural cycles, over sickness and health, birth and death.
Ascelin rolled up in one of the new blankets and fell asleep at once. “I’m sorry, sire,” said Dominic to the king. “I should have kept a better eye out for bandits. This is my own fault.”
It was, in fact, mine, for giving up on my spells just barely too soon. For that matter, if I had marked all our possessions with some sort of magic mark, I might be able to track them now-that is, if I dared leave Joachim.
“It’s not your fault,” said King Haimeric, “but it may be mine, for allowing the chaplain to accompany us without even a breastplate to protect him. But in a day or two, when he’s better, we’ll continue, either forward over the mountains or back into the western kingdoms. And then we’ll get some new supplies. You remember I insisted we bring along four times as much money as you and Ascelin seem to have thought we’d need, so we still have plenty. We weren’t going to want our heavy clothes much longer anyway.”
If Warin had sent the bandits after us, I thought, they might have been looking specifically for Claudia’s present. They were welcome to it. I was now convinced that it was something carrying a great curse, something that she had understandably wanted to get away from her children and which had then called down an attack on us.
I watched Joachim’s face, wondering if his were a healthy or unhealthy sleep, and how long it would take for the doctor’s ointments to take effect. I could keep the rain away with weather spells, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. The herbal spells known to be reliable against disease had all been turned over to the doctors generations ago.
Dominic scrambled to his feet. “I’m going to try to find Whirlwind.”
“But you’ll be walking into deadly danger!” protested the king.
“If they can ambush me, I can ambush them,” said the prince with a grim smile. “Come on, Hugo. We’ll track them together.”
The king shot me a worried look but said nothing further. He and I watched them disappear, then everything was again quiet, except for a bird singing cheerfully far down the hill.
V
An hour went by, two hours. Ascelin was still asleep. I didn’t know if it was good or bad for Dominic and Hugo to have been gone this long.
“Daimbert,” I heard a faint voice behind me.
I swung back around to the chaplain, between fear and hope. His dark eyes looked nearly normal.
“Daimbert, do you know any of the psalms?”
“Well, not really,” I stammered. “But- There’s the one you often read at Sunday service in chapel, the one with ‘Thou shalt not be afraid’ in the middle.”
“That’s the one,” he said, his eyes shut again. “Please say it for me.”
I said it slowly, trying to remember all the words correctly. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God; in him will I trust…. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”
The chaplain smiled a little when I had finished, but he did not open his eyes. “That’s better. I should not be afraid to meet God.”
“But Joachim! You’re not dying. The doctor was here and put some ointment on your wound to heal the infection.”
