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 after a moment.
“Yes,” I said because there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. We sat quietly for several minutes.
“You and the chaplain have been good friends,” said Hugo at last. There was a curious intimacy of sitting near him in the dark, hearing his breath but not able to see him. “I didn’t think wizards and priests were friends very often.”
“They’re not,” I said. When the silence began to stretch out again, I forced myself to say more. Hugo, without his normal bravado and bantering manner, seemed very young and vulnerable, and I did not want to dismiss him with monosyllabic answers. “Wizards and priests follow different sets of laws and gain power from very different sources. But Joachim and I have been friends since a short time after I became Royal Wizard of Yurt-even though I started our acquaintance by suspecting him of evil.”
“I think Father Joachim was always different from most priests.” I didn’t like the way Hugo put it in the past tense but made a sound of assent. “He was already royal chaplain of Yurt back when I was being trained in knighthood,” he went on, “but at the time I didn’t pay much attention. I think I’ve always assumed someone would become a priest only if he didn’t have the courage or the manhood to become anything else. My own father’s chaplain is well-meaning and fussy. But the royal chaplain is different. He always thinks he’s right, like all priests, and wants everyone else to have the same opinion he does, but it’s still not the same.”
I said nothing but let him continue.
“He doesn’t just preach about morality but acts as though he takes it very seriously himself. And he’s stayed brave even while dying. Do you know why he decided to become a priest in the first place?”
I made myself answer. “I don’t think he felt he could do anything else. You met the Lady Claudia. She may be too old for you, but she’s a stunningly beautiful woman, and Joachim rejected her love because he felt God had called him.”
Hugo thought this over. “Ascelin said he thinks she gave him King Solomon’s Pearl. What do you think? Do you think she still loves him? Do you think the bandits tried to kill him on purpose because he had it?”
“I have no idea,” I said, not caring this time if I sounded dismissive.
But after a few more minutes Hugo spoke again. Our sleeves brushed as we shifted, but most of the time we could have been disembodied minds, close together in the night with death very near.
“I realize,” said Hugo, “that in spite of all my knighthood training I’ve never before actually seen anyone dying from wounds suffered in battle or in ambush. Have you?”
“I’ve watched someone die before,” I said slowly, not liking the way he’d phrased the question.
“What do you think?” he persisted. “Is it really true, what the priests tell us, that we go to heaven when we die?”
“That is what they tell us. Joachim, at any rate, seems fairly sure of it.”
This time Hugo did not answer. We sat in silence for hours. At any rate, I assumed it was hours; I quickly lost all track of time, and it began to feel that this night had already lasted as long as most weeks. From the sound of his breathing Hugo had dozed off, and I myself had to fight increasingly powerful waves of drowsiness. Bodies needed sleep, too, no matter who might live or die.
My mind had wandered far away, halfway between waking and dream, when a soft sound brought me abruptly back to full consciousness. That sound was my own name.
“Hugo?” I said, but Hugo was asleep. It was Joachim who had spoken.
“Daimbert, I must apologize,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid I have given you a great deal of trouble and worry.”
I put my face down next to his. “I don’t care. It would be worth any amount of trouble and worry if I could save you from death.”
“But I’m afraid it’s all for nothing,” he continued. I was weak enough that, against my will, tears began leaking down my cheeks. I was so unhappy that it took me five seconds to understand what he said next. “Because it looks like I’m not going to die after all.”
I shook Hugo awake, crying hard now for no reason at all. “Light the lantern,” I told him, and “Keep your eyes shut,” to Joachim. Hugo and I carefully lifted my herbs away from the wound. The cut was clean, pink, and no longer infected.