“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.”
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 Melecherius on Eastern Magic, the bandits had left the tents, the rice, the maps, the lanterns, the ropes and supplies for the horses, the king’s spare eyeglasses, some of the blankets, and virtually everything in the chaplain’s saddle-bag. The foil-wrapped present was gone, but his Bible and crucifix and the pilgrim’s guide were still there.
“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.