In the early morning, the high plateau was half hidden by mist, but the sun rising behind it gave the rows of trees against the sky a halo of light. When the count’s stable boy led our horses into the courtyard, I saw at once that he had switched the harnesses. The rangy bay Joachim had been riding had the correct saddle, but its bridle had bells, whereas my old white mare had no bells.
Joachim did not actually become angry; he never did. “I’m a priest and a representative of the cathedral,” he said. “I can’t go visit a hermit while riding a horse with bells,” and he proceeded to lengthen the stirrups on my mare.
“Wait a minute, Father, I can change the bridles,” said the mortified stable boy.
“It’s not your fault,” the chaplain said quietly. “I have no time to wait, but think no more of it.” His long legs reaching well below the mare’s belly, he rode out through the gates, while I scrambled up on the bay, hastily tugged up the stirrups, and hurried to catch him.
We rode in silence, through a woods where dark pines stood tall on either hand, then slowly up and out of the pines as the road ascended toward the plateau. Our horses were breathing hard when we emerged at the top.
Joachim pulled the mare over to the side to rest and sat stroking her mane. Here the wind blew across pastures thick with wild flowers. A mile away, I could see a group of brown and white cows and a stone barn, but otherwise we seemed to have the plateau to ourselves. In the bright sun and air, it did not seem the place for a great horned rabbit.
It also did not seem a place to be quarreling with the chaplain. “We’ll want to rest the horses for a few minutes anyway,” I said. “Why don’t we change the harnesses now?”
He turned his dark eyes on me, then unexpectedly smiled, a genuine smile that worked its way up from his mouth to his cheekbones and eyebrows. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m being both silly and stubborn.” He swung down off the mare. “I wanted to arrive early at the hermitage, but fifteen minutes isn’t going to make any difference. Let’s give the horses a rest, and I can tell you what we’re likely to find.”
Whether the chaplain felt he needed a wizard’s protection against the horned rabbit, or he was worried about the wood nymph, I was pleased he might still want the company of someone who didn’t appreciate moral issues.
But he hesitated for a moment before beginning. “As you may know,” he said at last, “there is a deep limestone valley cut into this plateau. The hermitage is located in a grove at the upper end, where the valley’s river is born. I visited it once when I first came to Yurt, before you became royal wizard. The hermitage is also a shrine, sacred to the memory of Saint Eusebius.” He paused for a long look at me. “Did you ever hear of Saint Eusebius of Yurt?”
I shook my head. Wizards don’t learn very much about saints.
“I know you,” he said slowly, “so I feel I should warn you. There’s a special relic of the saint at the shrine, and the hermit will not appreciate it if you laugh at the relic.”
“But why should I laugh at a relic?” I protested.
“Because,” he answered, almost reluctantly, “because it’s the saint’s big toe.” He had turned away, but for a moment I half imagined he might find this funny himself.
“The saint’s big toe? But what happened to the rest of the saint?”
“Eusebius was eaten by a dragon,” said Joachim, looking at me as soberly as if it had never occurred to him that a saint’s toe could be amusing.
“When was this?” I was amazed that I had never heard the story.
“It must be,” he hesitated as though calculating, “a good fifteen hundred years ago, long before the kingdom of Yurt or the rest of the western kingdoms even existed, back in the latter days of the Empire.” That explained why I had never heard of Saint Eusebius; I had never been strong on history, especially ancient history.
The morning sun shone on our heads, and what looked like a hawk soared high above. It was hard to believe in either saints or dragons-or, for that matter, in great horned rabbits-on a lovely June day like this.
“Saint Eusebius himself was living in the grove, then,” Joachim continued. “He lived alone, spending his days in devotion and contemplation. But when a dragon appeared up on the plateau and started eating the people’s flocks, he felt he had to do something.”
“He should have called on a wizard,” I provided. “I know there were wizards, even back then.”
Other than giving me a quick look, he paid no attention to my interruption. “Saint Eusebius took his crucifix and went to face the dragon, to command it in the name of Christ to leave the area.”
“But Joachim, you know that wouldn’t work. It might work with a demon, but dragons aren’t inherently evil, just magic.”
It was harder this time for him to ignore my interruption, but he managed. “Inspired by the devil, the dragon began to eat the holy man. But a desperate group of peasants had banded together, armed with spears and meat hooks. When the dragon tried to swallow the saint, it miraculously began to gag and choke on him. While the dragon was thus occupied, the peasants burst out of hiding and attacked it. One of them got in a lucky stroke with a meat hook and pierced the dragon’s throat at the one spot where it was vulnerable.”
He paused, as though the horror of it were almost too much. “But they were too late to save Saint Eusebius. All that remained of him was his left big toe.”
I felt rather proud that I did not even smile. “And so they preserved the relic at the hermitage where he had lived,” I said, “and subsequent generations of hermits have succeeded Eusebius there ever since. Is that it? But what do you have to investigate now?”
“Saint Eusebius was always a rather, well, difficult-if holy-man, even while he was alive. Now, fifteen hundred years after his death, some say he’s a difficult saint.”
“What do you mean, difficult?”
“Well,” said Joachim after an almost imperceptible pause, “here’s an example. A lady, a very lovely and vain one, went to his shrine to pray for help in overcoming her faults. The saint began with her vanity, by putting a giant wart on her nose.”
I could see the problem. What was the church supposed to do when the forces of good turned out to be a real pain?
Joachim hurried on without waiting for a response. “His, uh, difficult nature is why the bishop sent me here. Certain priests, in a church two hundred miles from here, have written to the bishop. They say that Eusebius appeared to them in a vision, saying that he was ‘fed up’ with having his relics at this shrine, and that he wanted his toe to be preserved at their church.”
Although a saint who induced giant warts had seemed to have promising possibilities, the situation now sounded like the confusing and dangerous churchly concerns they used to warn us against at the wizards’ school. “If he’s been dead so long, why does it matter where his toe is?” I asked irritably.
Joachim answered with infuriating patience. “The saints are still here with us on earth at the same time as they are in heaven. Even you must know that.”
“But why would priests in a distant city want an old dead saint’s toe anyway?”
Joachim sighed. “This may be hard for you to understand. Their church, the church where Eusebius originally made his profession, has wanted his relics for fifteen hundred years. He was a priest in their city, the son I believe of a provincial administrator under the Empire, before he came to this valley to become a hermit.”
A city boy like me, I thought, or least like I used to be.
“After the saint was martyred,” Joachim continued, “the priests there even rededicated their church in his name.”
“But that was all so long ago!”
Joachim shook his head, with the air of someone who had known all along that I wouldn’t understand. “Individuals forget, and individuals die. But churches are undying institutions, and they never forget.” He took a deep breath. “But you don’t need to worry about either the saint or the hermit who lives there now. That’s my responsibility. I want you to worry about the wood nymph.”
He stood up and took the offending bridle with bells off his horse. In a few moments, with our harnesses where they should be and the stirrups readjusted, we continued on across the plateau.
In another mile, the road turned abruptly to the left. Ahead of us was a low stone wall. Rather than turning, Joachim rode his bay up to the wall. “Look at this.”
Although one could not see it until almost on top of it, before us was a narrow and very deep valley. I pulled my mare’s head up more sharply than necessary when I realized we were standing at the very edge of a cliff, with only the low wall between us and an abrupt drop. The morning mists still lingered below in the shadow of the valley walls. Beneath the vertical white cliffs, an intensely green valley curved away, a narrow river rushing down its center.
“Directly below us,” said Joachim, pointing downward, “hidden by those trees, is the hermitage, built at the source of the river. There is a direct path down-or I should rather say steps cut into the cliff-just a little farther along, but the road itself takes two more miles to get down to the valley floor.” Off to our left, at a spot where the cliffs were not quite so steep, I could see the white line of the road winding its way sharply down into the valley, appearing and disappearing among the beeches.
Joachim shook his horse’s reins and started along the road. I followed after one more look down. I could have flown down myself easily enough, but I would not want to try it carrying the mare.
We had gone less than a hundred yards when Joachim stopped again, pulling up the reins so hard that his normally gentle bay half reared and gave a protesting whinny. Wondering if it might be the mysterious horned rabbit, I hurried my horse to join him, then stared with equal surprise.
Before us was a little wooden booth. No one was inside, but a large brightly-colored sign proclaimed, “See the Holy Toe! Five pennies on foot, fifteen pennies in the basket.”
I was trying to work out what this could mean, if perhaps whoever had painted the sign was offering us a chance to see the holy toe on someone else’s foot, and why a toe in a basket should be more valuable, when there was movement under a nearby tree. A young man in a feathered cap stood up and came out from the shadows.
“Greetings, my fine gentlemen!” he said in the hearty tones of someone manning a booth at a fair. “Are you here to see the Holy Toe of Saint Eusebius the Cranky? I’m afraid we don’t have the basket ready quite yet, but if you want to go down on foot it’s not a bad climb-and cheaper, too!”
Joachim dismounted and looked sternly at him. “So you’re charging people just for the privilege of climbing down the cliff to the Holy Grove?”
The man gave a start, as though feeling the impact of the chaplain’s eyes, but he recovered almost immediately. “Excuse me, Father, I didn’t notice your vestments at first. If you’re worried that we’re restricting access to the relics, you needn’t be; people can still go around by the road for free. We’re just providing an extra service.”
“Charging them to climb down the steps is an extra service?”
“Ah, but we’ve improved the path!” said the man proudly. “And our real service is going to be the basket. As I said, we don’t have it ready quite yet, but we should in a few weeks.”
“What is this basket?” I asked.
The man looked at me properly for the first time. “Excuse me,” he said with a delighted smile, “but are you a wizard? You are? This is wonderful! You have no idea how much we’d been hoping to be able to attract a wizard.
“You see,” he went on, “the basket is all very well, but it would be so much better if we could have a wizard working with us. Wouldn’t it be more exciting and appealing to have people carried up and down the cliff by magic than lowered in a big basket at the end of a pulley? I’m sure we could charge more, too. We’d give you a fair cut of the profits, you needn’t worry about that. You wouldn’t even need to be here! Just set up the spell and teach us how to keep it working, and we’ll do the rest.”
There were so many things wrong with his assumptions I scarcely knew where to begin. “I’m afraid a spell to lower people down the cliff couldn’t just be ‘set up’ and then kept working with no wizard here,” I said at last.
He looked thoughtful. “That might be a problem. But maybe you’d prefer to be here yourself, at least during the summer months when business will be best! I’m sure this will be enormously profitable, once word gets out. Do you have a post at the moment?”
“I’m Royal Wizard of the kingdom of Yurt,” I said gravely, “and this is the Royal Chaplain. I don’t need any extra income.”
The man was taken aback for a moment, but he seemed to have quick powers of recovery. “Well, then, maybe you know some other wizard who might be interested. Or maybe you’d even like to lend a hand yourself when the king doesn’t need you! I should put the proposition up to him myself, explain that this will really make Yurt a well-known place, not just a novelty as one of the smallest of the western kingdoms.”
“We’ll take the road down to the Holy Grove,” said Joachim, abruptly swinging back up into the saddle.
“But I haven’t even had a chance yet to tell you about all our souvenirs, Father!” the man said eagerly. “As you can see, we’re not quite ready for business yet, but in the next week or two we hope to have reproductions of the Holy Toe itself, figurines of a dragon-children always like things like that-and booklets telling of the life and miracles of the Cranky Saint.”
Joachim’s shoulders stiffened into rigidity, but he made no answer. Instead he kicked his horse sharply into a trot. I was right behind him. The man in the feathered cap waved cheerfully after us.
After three-quarters of a mile, as the road left the level plateau and began its steep descent toward the valley floor, I had suppressed silent laugher enough that I dared ask a question. Even for me, originally the son of a city merchant, this seemed to have gone much too far. “Had you known about all this?”
“The bishop made a brief reference to ‘some inappropriate activities’ at the site,” said Joachim, looking straight ahead. “But I hadn’t realized it was this bad. No wonder Saint Eusebius wants to leave.”