Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 (14 page)

“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. Joachim managed to drink it, though he gave me a puzzled look. He might not even recognize me.

Ascelin finaly returned in mid-morning, haggard and accompanied by a shriveled little man on horseback. “Al 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.

“Al right,” said the doctor somewhat less reluctantly. “Is this the patient? What have you al 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.

“Al 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 tel 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 saddlebag 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 the, 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? Al right, maybe you should try some of your magic. I think I’ve done afl that medicine can do.” He rose briskly, rebuckled his saddlebag, and mounted.

“Thank you for coming,” said Ascelin somewhat tardily as the doctor rode away.

I grabbed the tal prince by the arm. “He’s not going to the, 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 kil him as wel as steal the Black Pearl from him, or whether they sliced his throat essentialy by accident. I did manage to buy a few things in the vilage.” 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. “Tlease don’t the,” 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 roled up in one of the new blankets and fel 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 spels too soon. For that matter, if I had marked al 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 alowing the chaplain to accompany us without even a breastplate to protect him. But in a day or two, when he’s better, we’l continue, either forward over the mountains or back into the western kingdoms. And then we’l 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 stil 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 specificaly 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 caled 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 spels, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. The herbal spels known to be reliable against disease had al been turned over to the doctors generations ago.

Dominic scrambled to his feet. “I’m going to try to find Whirlwind.”

“But you’l 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’l 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 cheerfuly far down the 1 “ An hour went by, two hours. Ascelin was stil 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?”

“Wel, not realy,” I stammered. “But—there’s the one you often read at Sunday service in chapel, the one with “Hiou 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 al the words correctly. “He that dweleth in the secret place of the most High shal abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I wil say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God; in Him wil 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. Tel 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 stil 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 normaly listen to wizards, especialy those filed 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 spel 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 folowing the tracks and, after a few miles, Dominic tried whistling and his stalion 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 stalion good-naturedly between the eyes. “You probably taught them a thing or two about high-strung horses, didn’t you?”

Even the packhorses were there. Ascelin was awake now; the rest of us puled 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 stil in the luggage. Most of the food was gone, as were some of the cooking pots and spare clothes. But as wel 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 virtualy everything in the chaplain’s saddlebag. The foil-wrapped present was gone, but his Bible and crucifix and the pilgrim’s guide were stil there.

“Those were real bandits, al right,” said Ascelin, “but it certainly seems as though they were looking for something specific. They’ve taken the food and money, of course, but beyond that they didn’t realy care.”

I supped the crucifix into Joachim’s stil 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 vilage?” 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’l put rice in it.”

Everyone but me 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 sail 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; between them, the flesh was green.

“Wel, the doctor already tried this ointment,” Ascelin said, “but, perhaps, if we used this other one—”

But I was gone, flying down the hilside. 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 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 Warm’s castle far below, but I certainly wasn’t going there. Off to one side, partly hidden by the slope of the hil, were the closely packed roofs of a vilage that must be where Ascelin had found the doctor. Wel, his medicine had already proven ineffective.

Beyond the vilage 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 hil.

This was such a terrible thought that it started me flying again, though I stopped when I realized I was stil 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 rationaly at plants.

I saw no plants that I recognized as having medicinal qualities, but there were plenty here that did not grow on the hils 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 sylables 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 al. I tried another, this with a yelow flower. As near as I could tel, 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 stil alive,” said Ascelin, “but he’s stil 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 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 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 stil 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 chil 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. If I couldn’t save his, aU 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 supernatural into his own spels with al 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’l 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 mentaly 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.