He nodded, a very slight motion of his head. “My mind had been wandering a little, but I remember now. Tell the others not to go after the bandits; I have forgiven them. It is good to have my mind clear again, to be able to repent of my sins while there is still time. I assume there is no priest on this mountain to say the rites, but you can pray for me.”
Jesus Christ. I put my face in my hands. If he truly thought he was dying, I couldn’t argue with him. I tried praying, but the saints do not normally listen to wizards, especially those filled not with purity and contrition but with fury and despair.
My thoughts were broken by the clatter of hooves and the long blast of a horn. I leaped up, ready to defend the chaplain with every spell I had, or my bare hands if necessary.
But it was not the bandits. It was Dominic and Hugo.
“We found the horses, sire!” cried Hugo excitedly, lowering his horn. “We kept on following the tracks, and after a few miles Dominic tried whistling, and his stallion whinnied back!”
“I don’t think they know much about horses,” added Dominic with a chuckle. “Look at the condition they’re in!” The horses’ hair was dark and caked with sweat. “They hadn’t even unsaddled them, just turned them loose after rifling the luggage. We saw no sign of the bandits themselves. Come on, Whirlwind, come on,” rubbing his stallion good-naturedly between the eyes. “You probably taught them a thing or two about high-strung horses, didn’t you?”
Even the pack horses were there. Ascelin was awake now, and the rest of us pulled the saddles and packs from the horses to see what might be left, while Dominic began rubbing them down. Though he was not as excited as Hugo, from the way he held his shoulders he was even more pleased and proud.
There was a surprising amount still in the luggage. Most of the food was gone, as were some of the cooking pots and spare clothes. But as well as
“Those were real bandits, all right,” said Ascelin, “but it certainly looks as though they were looking for something specific. They’ve taken the food and money, of course, but beyond that they didn’t really care.”
I slipped the crucifix into Joachim’s still hands. He was asleep, having apparently not heard the horses. I leafed through his Bible and found the right psalm. I didn’t seem to have gotten more than a few of the words wrong.
“Did you try cooking the chicken I brought up from the village?” asked Ascelin. “You didn’t?” He shook his head, smiling. “Since I have to do everything on this quest myself, I’m not sure why I even bothered to bring the rest of you along. I’m going to make the chaplain some soup. I think I’ll put rice in it.”
Everyone but me now seemed in a surprisingly good mood. Hugo whistled as he got out his bag of polishing sand and started trying to get the black off his armor.
“I wonder if these men were looking for the same thing those first bandits were looking for,” said the king. But I no longer cared. Joachim was still breathing steadily. I read him several psalms in case he could hear me.
“I guess we’d better wake him,” said Ascelin at last. “He needs nourishment to get his strength back, and the soup’s ready.”
I touched him gently on the cheek. His skin was burning hot. “Come on, Joachim, wake up. You know how good Ascelin’s soup is. Wake up.”
He continued to breathe, but there was no other response. I tried moving his hand, with no better luck. “Ascelin,” I said, hearing the panic in my own voice, “he won’t wake up.”
The prince had found his own wound ointments in the luggage. He eased the bandage off again and frowned at the wound. The edges of the cut skin were turned back and black, and between them the flesh was green.
“Well, the doctor already tried this ointment,” Ascelin said, “but perhaps if we used this other one-”
But I was gone, flying down the hillside. My only thought was that I must find herbs, must find them at once. Thanks to what I had learned from my predecessor, the old retired Royal Wizard of Yurt, I knew more, a little more, herbal magic than most school-trained wizards. Modern magic was a magic of air and light, but the old natural magic of earth and herbs, magic that relied on the innate properties of objects, was the only magic short of pacts with the devil that could break through the cycle of life and death.
I realized I had no idea where I was going and stopped, hovering in midair. I could see King Warin’s castle far below, but I certainly wasn’t going there. Off to one side, partly hidden by the slope of the hill, were the closely packed roofs of a village that must be where Ascelin had found the doctor. Well, his medicine had already proved ineffective.
Beyond the village on a little rise were the scattered white crosses of a cemetery. Joachim would not even have a pilgrimage church like Dominic’s father. Tomorrow we would bury him there on that hill.
This was such a terrible thought that it started me flying again, though I stopped when I realized I was still flying madly, without direction. I dropped down into a meadow, where the sheep gave me somewhat puzzled looks, and forced myself to look calmly and rationally at plants.
I saw no plants that I recognized as having medicinal qualities, but there were plenty here that did not grow on the hills of Yurt. I tried to remember my wizardly predecessor, dead almost eight years now, and the lessons he had taught me in recognizing a plant’s properties.
I closed my eyes and hovered on the edge of magic’s four dimensions, slowly turning the flow of magic with the powerful syllables of the Hidden Language. I opened my eyes and picked a plant at random to probe with magic. This one seemed to have no useful properties at all. I tried another, this with a yellow flower. As near as I could tell, it might be useful in cases of muscle strain. A third would sicken chickens, and the fourth sicken cows.
It was late in the afternoon when I flew back up the mountain, carrying a double handful of a blue-flowered plant. If I remembered the old wizard’s lessons correctly, it should be good against fever and infection. But the sheep seemed to like it, for I could find very few specimens, and those were eaten almost down to the ground. The search for whole plants had seemed interminable. As I hurried back to our campsite I feared I was already too late.
The others looked at me soberly as I dropped into their midst. “He’s still alive,” said Ascelin, “but he’s still unconscious.”
I already knew he was alive; the first thing I had looked for was whether they had covered his face.
“We’ve been taking turns reading the Bible,” said the king.
“Boil these up,” I said to Ascelin, pushing my precious plants into his hands. “It’s the last thing I can think of to do.”
In a few minutes I myself packed the hot, wet plants onto Joachim’s throat. They steamed, and he twitched a little, but I could see no immediate change. Not wanting to lose any of their efficacy, assuming they had any, I propped Joachim up and slowly dripped into his mouth the water in which the plants were boiled.
The rest of us ate Ascelin’s chicken soup, leaving a little simmering at the edge of the fire in case the chaplain ever woke up. It felt depressing and demeaning that we as humans were so bound by our physical bodies that in the middle of crises of life and death we still had to eat.
We pitched the tents, and I lifted Joachim gently with magic to carry him in out of the wind and cool air. His skin was not as hot as it had been earlier, but I did not dare guess whether this was due to the fever breaking or the chill of death setting in.
I sat next to him, listening to his breathing, while it slowly grew dark outside. Joachim had saved my life my first year in Yurt, and if I couldn’t save his all my wizardry was worthless, of no more value than a handful of brass coins. For the first time I thought I understood why a wizard might plunge into black magic, mix the super natural into his own spells with all of black magic’s powers to reverse natural laws, even if it meant the loss of his soul.
Hugo put his head into the tent. “I’ll watch with him for a while. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I can’t sleep anyway. But come in if you want.” I mentally forgave him for his remark about the tourniquet.
Hugo came in, dropping the tent flap behind him, and settled down next to me. “I’m sorry he’s sick,” he said
