“Death, illness, imprisonment, loss of money, loss of will to return,” said Joachim, which seemed to sum up the possibilities. “If they are dead, I am glad they were first able to visit the holy sites where Christ’s feet trod.”

I decided not to respond to this last comment. Instead I said, “It is a perilous journey, even now.”

“It must always be somewhat tense in the East,” the chaplain agreed. “Politically, there are a few independent governors still left over from the fall of the Empire, then the emirs, and the royal Son of David-and that’s only the beginning. It must also be complicated on a religious level, because the Children of Abraham and the People of the Prophet also have holy shrines in the Holy Land, as well of course as the Christian shrines.”

“Don’t they all worship the same God?” I asked. If the organized Church had always lacked interest for me, comparative religion had had even less.

“There is only one true God,” said Joachim dryly.

“I’ve mostly been thinking about the glamour of the East,” I said, deciding that now was not the time to learn more comparative religion. “All the different peoples and cultures. The spices, the flowers, the bazaars-”

“How about the different magic?” the chaplain surprised me by asking.

“Well, there certainly is only one true magic,” I said self-righteously. “But you’ve got a point. The mages there work their spells somewhat differently than we wizards, and there are different magical creatures. The school doesn’t even teach eastern magic now, although they used to have one wizard who taught it, forty or fifty years ago. They sent me an old copy of his textbook to take along, Melecherius on Eastern Magic.” The thick book made a bulge in my neatly-packed saddle bag.