It was Eli, he realized, although undoubtedly acting as God’s messenger, who had given him back his love of the Lord, his belief in a living Creation, and most of all, his certainty that what was, was meant to be.
The silent, damaged man had given Bannity his heart’s desire, even though the priest himself had not known what it was.
Grateful, renewed, the priest resolved to speak on behalf of the two prisoners when the Prosecutor General returned to the village, to tell the truth even if it meant admitting that he had, for a time, lost his own faith. Father Bannity would undoubtedly have been their only defender, except that on the day before the traveling lawspeaker rode into town, the boy named Tobias came back.
He had been, the boy told the villagers (and very gleefully too) in the town of Eader’s Church, and it was just as big and wonderful as he had imagined. “They have lots of dogs!” he said, his eyes still bright with the spectacle he had seen. “And houses that go up and up! And people!” He seemed to feel that the whipping his father had just given him — on general principles, since the actual mechanics of the boy’s disappearance were still a mystery — was a small price to pay for all he’d seen.
Tobias knew nothing about how he had got from the village to the far-off town — it had happened in an instant, he said, from clasping Eli’s hand to finding himself in the middle of the Eader’s Church marketplace — but unfortunately there had been no equally magical way of returning. It had taken him all the days since he’d been gone to walk home.
When the Prosecutor General arrived the next day, there was no longer a case for murder to be tried, although several of the villagers were talking darkly of witchcraft. The Prosecutor General, a small, round, self- important fellow with a beard on his chin as small and sharp as an arrowhead, insisted on being taken to see the two former prisoners, who had been released to their campsite in Squire’s Wood, if not to their previous state of anonymity.
Holding out his rod of office, the lawspeaker approached Eli and said, “In the name of the State and its gracious Sovereign, His Majesty the King, you must tell me how you sent the boy to Eader’s Church.”
The big man only looked at him, unbothered. Then he extended his hand. The Prosecutor General, after a moment’s hesitation, extended his own small plump hand and allowed it to be grasped.
When Father Bannity and the other men watching had finished blinking their eyes, they saw that instead of his prosecutor’s tunic, the Prosecutor General was now unquestionably wearing a judge’s robes, cowl, and wreath, and that a judge’s huge, round, golden emblem of office now hung on a chain around his neck. (Some also suggested that he had a stronger chin as well, and more penetrating eyes than he had heretofore possessed.) The ex-Prosecutor General, now a full-fledged Adjudicator, blinked, ran his fingers over the leafy wreath on his head, then fell down on his knees and uttered a happy prayer.
“Twelve years I’ve waited!” he said, over and over. “Thank you, Lord! Passed over and passed over — but no more!”
He then rose, and with fitting jurisprudential gravity, proclaimed, “These men have not practiced any unlicensed witchcraft. I rule that they are true messengers of God, and should be treated with respect.”
Finding that his pockets were now richer by several gold coins — the difference between his old salary and new — the new-minted Adjudicator promptly sold his cart and donkey to Pender the village blacksmith and left town in a covered carriage, with a newly-hired driver and two new horses. Later rumors said that he arrived home to find he had been awarded the King’s Fourteenth Judicial Circuit.
In the wake of the Prosecutor General’s astonishing transformation, Squire’s Wood began to fill with people from the village and even some of the surrounding villages — for news travels fast in these rural areas — turning the two men’s camp into a site of pilgrimage. The size of the gathering grew so quickly that Father Bannity and some of the wood’s nearer and soberer neighbors worried that the entire forest soon would be trampled flat, but the squireward could not turn the newcomers away any more than he could have held back the tide at Landsend.
Although none of this swarm of postulants was turned away, not all received their heart’s desire, either — Eli’s hand opened only to one in perhaps three or four and it was impossible to force the issue. One man, a jar maker named Keely, tried to pry the big man’s fingers apart and shove his own hand in, and although he succeeded, nothing magical happened to him except that he developed a painful boil in the middle of his forehead the following day.
Some of the pilgrims’ wishes turned out to be surprisingly small and domestic: a man whose sick cow suddenly recovered, a woman whose youngest son abruptly discovered he could hear as well as he had before the fever. Others were more predictable, like the man who after clasping Eli’s hand discovered a pot of old coins buried under an ancient wall he was rebuilding.
To the astonishment of many, two blighted young folk who lived on neighboring farms, a young man with a shattered leg and a girl with a huge strawberry blotch on her face, both went to Eli, and both were gifted with a handclasp, but came out again looking just the same as they had before. But within the next few days the young man’s drunkard father died of a fit, leaving him the farm, and the girl’s cruel, miserly uncle who treated her like a servant fell under the wheels of a cart and died also, leaving her free to marry if anyone would have her. The two young people did indeed marry each other, and seemed quite happy, although they both still bore the disfigurements that had made them so pitiable to the rest of the village.
The only apparent failure of Eli’s magical touch was Pender, the blacksmith, who went to the campsite a massive, strapping man with a beard that reached halfway down his chest, and went away again with the shape and voice and apparently all the working parts of a slender young woman. He left town the same night, trading the Prosecutor General’s old cart for a pair of pretty dresses before setting off on the donkey toward the nearest city to start his life over (at least so he told his neighbors), so no one was ever able to find out exactly how such a strange thing had happened when others had been served so well.
Soon the lame youth and other grateful folk came and built a great tent in Squire’s Wood for Eli and Feliks to shelter in, and began bringing them daily offerings of food and drink. People were coming to see the two strangers from all around, and even the villagers who had not obtained a supernatural gift from the silent giant came to realize how valuable his presence was: the village was full of pilgrims, including some quite well-to-do folk who were willing to pay exorbitant prices to be fed and housed near the miracle worker.
Father Bannity, still basking in the joyful light of his newly-recovered faith, did not doubt that Eli and Feliks were gifts from God, but he had not lost all caution or good sense, either, and he was worried by what was happening to his quiet village. He sent a messenger describing recent events to Dondolan, the nearest accredited wizard, who had an eyrie near the top of Reaching Peak. The wizard had not passed through the village for years — but he and the priest had met several times, and Bannity liked the mage and trusted his good sense, certainly beyond that of the village elders, who were growing as greedy of pilgrimage gold as children tumbled into a treacle vat, happily eating themselves to death.
Dondolan the Clear-Eyed, as they had been named back in his Academy days, took one look at the priest’s letter, then leaped out of his chair and began packing (a task which takes a wizard a much shorter time than the average traveler.) The messenger asked if there would be any reply, and Dondolan told him, “I will be there before you.” Then, suiting deed to word, he promptly vanished.
He appeared again in the village at the base of the mountain, and took his horse from the livery stable there — even an accomplished wizard will not travel by magic for twenty leagues, not knowing what he will find at the other end, for it is a fierce drain on the resources — and set out. Other than an ill-considered attempt by some local bandits to waylay him just outside Drunken Princes’ Pass, an interaction which increased the frog population of the highlands but did not notably slow Dondolan’s progress, it was a swift journey, and he reached the nameless village within two days. Spurning more ordinary couriers, he had sent a raven ahead, and as a result Father Bannity waited at the crossroads outside of town to meet him.
When they had greeted each other — fondly, for the respect was mutual, despite their differences on the theological practicalities — Bannity led Dondolan through the fields around the outskirts of the village, so as not to cause more ruckus and rumor than was necessary: already the village practically breathed the stuff, and the pilgrims arriving daily from all over only made things more frantic.
“Do you wish to speak to the two of them?” Bannity asked. “It will be difficult, but I might persuade the village elders to let us close off the camp, although it will not be easy to remove all the addled folk who are living there now — they have practically made a new town in the middle of the forest.”
