Easter came early that year. Patches of snow still lingered in the woods, although buds on the trees gave their branches a slightly fuzzy look against the pale sky. On Easter Monday the last preparations were finally made for our expedition to find the elder Sir Hugo, his wizard Evrard, and the knights who had accompanied them.

All of us had new gray cloaks with scarlet crosses embroidered on the shoulder. Tents, blankets, rope, clothing, food, pots, weapons, armor, maps, shovels, boots, water bottles, and the king’s spare eyeglasses were all organized and packed, so systematically that I wondered if we would dare actually use anything. In the morning, all we would need to do would be to strap the packs onto our horses. The night before leaving, I asked the chaplain to my chambers after dinner for a last glass of wine.

He sat quietly by the fire, long legs stretched out before him. My study was so neat, tidied and straightened in preparation for my absence, that I hardly felt it was mine anymore. I wondered if I should put a magic lock on the door when I left and decided against it. It would open only to my own palm print, and if we didn’t come back the queen might want these chambers for her new wizard.

“It’s strange, Joachim,” I said as I poured out the wine. “I’m ready to go, I’ve been eager to go for more than six weeks, yet now that we’re about to leave I feel a curious reluctance. We’re going off into something so different from our life here in Yurt, so hard to imagine in advance, that it could almost be death. It’s as though I won’t exist after tomorrow.”

He sipped from the glass I handed him and looked at me from deep-set eyes. “‘I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until I drink it new in my father’s kingdom,’” he said. “Is that it?”