Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 (19 page)

I wondered if it was too early to disturb Evrard. I

turned back toward the part of the grove where the wood nymph had her tree. This time I found the tree immediately. “Evrard!” I caled softly.

A touseled red head emerged from the leaves far above me. “Good morning!” he caled, as cheerful as I had ever seen him.

“I think we’ve done everything here we came to do.”

“I certainly have!” said Evrard, with a grin I was glad the hermit had not seen.

“We need to get back to the royal castle of Yurt. First we should stop by the duchess’ castle, even though I doubt they’d be there after two days, so—”

“Who’s that?” caled Evrard, interrupting me. “Is it more pilgrims?” High in the tree, he could see more clearly than I, but in a moment I, too, picked up the flicker of rapid movement among distant beeches.

Someone was coming down the steep road into the valey.

I quickly began to put together a far-seeing spel, wondering if it were the priests come for the relics of the Cranky Saint. Then I stumbled on the words of the spel as I felt an icy and completely irrational conviction that I would see a manlike creature, not alive and not dead.

At last I had the spel functioning passably and was able to see that it was a single rider. By now the horse had reached the valey floor and was heading toward us. With a start, I recognized the duchess.

A duchess should not be riding unaccompanied through the countryside. “Come on down. Hurry,” I caled sharply to Evrard. He floated down from the tree, and we flew over the waterfal and along the trail to meet her, while I imagined al sorts of alarming possibilities. Neither Nimrod nor Dominic was witn her.

“There you are,” said Diana with satisfaction. She reined in her horse and dismounted. “I thought I might find you here. You look as though you’ve been sleeping in the woods for days.” I glanced down at myself and realized that I had been wearing the same clothes for three days now.

Evrard hurriedly tried to comb his hair with his fingers; he looked even worse than I did. I wanted to ask Diana what had happened, if she had realy eloped with Nimrod, but I could not make myself do it.

‘The grove has powers of attraction I don’t fuly understand, my lady. We’ve been meaning to go to your castle for two days and, somehow, we’ve never gotten there.”

“Wel, we weren’t there, anyway,” she said absently.

In her stained riding cloak, she appeared nearly as little like an appropriate member of an aristocratic court as we did.

“But where were you? Is everyone al right?”

“Of course everyone’s al right,” she said, surprised. “But you’re correct about the grove,” she continued. “It’s always had the power to draw people toward it. And not just the pilgrims who come to worship at the shrine 01 Saint Eusebius or to seek the hermit’s wisdom. The story is that a wood nymph lives here. Thousands of years ago, back when everyone was stil pagan, people came to worship her.” She stil lives here, my lady,” said Evrard, speaking for the first time.

“Is that so?” said Diana slowly, as though understanding more than he had meant to tel her. He reddened under her steady gaze.

She turned back to me. “My father, the old duke, wanted to cut the grove down when I was a little girl. He even started making arrangements for the hermit to move somewhere else. My father said having a nymph’s grove just encouraged women to practice secret rituals—fertility and the nice, I presume. I think it was his chaplain’s idea.”

“But what happened?” If Dominic had murdered Nimrod, she seemed to be taking it remarkably calmly. “King Haimerie wouldn’t let him cut down the trees. I was just as pleased myself, though of course I couldn’t say that to my father. The king adjudged that the grove was in royal territory, not ducal territory. I don’t think he cared one way or the other about the wood nymph—or even the hermit. But he hated to see the beeches cut.”

“You stil haven’t said why you’re here alone, this early in the morning.”

“Saddle your horses,” said the duchess. “Nimrod should be down at the lower end of the valey by now. We were folowing what he thought was a trail left by a great horned rabbit up on the plateau. It just looked

like an ordinary rabbit track to me, but he’s even better at hunting than I am. The trail went straight down the slope into the valey and so did he, but I preferred to come around by the road. We caught one horned rabbit yesterday, so this one is the last.’ So my paralysis trap would never be tested—probably just as wel.

Evrard and I retrieved our saddles and packs from the stone hut. There was no sign of the apprentices, but I scribbled a note thanking mem for their hospitality. Our mares, content and wel-fed after two days of eating the rich valey grass, looked at us grumpily as we approached but alowed Evrard to catch them.

“And where is Dominic?” I asked Diana as we rode down the valey.

“Last I knew,” she said with a shrug, “he’d gone off to see the old retired Royal Wizard.’

“I don’t understand, my lady. I’d have thought Dominic would be more interested in where you and Nimrod had gone than in the old wizard.” The duchess burst into laughter. She seemed in an excelent mood this morning. ‘We hadn’t left yet when he did. He was going to try to force the old wizard to dismantle his monster.” My heart gave a hard thump. “What?”

“A message I slipped under his door may have helped him decide he ought to go,” said the duchess. She chuckled as she spoke, then turned to look at us gravely. “If you two plan to deceive either Nimrod or me, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do much better. It was clear from what you said at dinner the other night that the former Royal Wizard of Yurt had created a new and terrifying creature.” My stomach knotted. I put a hand over my eyes, realized this probably wasn’t safe when riding a narrow road immediately next to a river and, instead, glared at Diana. “So you sent him off to the old wizard’s cottage to do goodness knows what, maybe even set the monster loose through his bumbling, just to make

sure he didn’t realize that you and Nimrod were leaving together?”

‘It worked,” she said mildly. “Besides, I’d already told him we were going hunting again.”

Diana didn’t care whom she irritated, but if she continued to flirt with Nimrod even after Dominic had proposed, Joachim and I would have to deal with a furious and humiliated regent for the rest of the king’s absence—assuming he lived through his encounter with the monster. If I loved the people of Yurt as I had said to Evrard, then I could not pick and choose between them. To love Yurt meant not just the king and queen and baby prince, the chaplain and the constable and Gwen and little Gwennie, the queen’s Aunt Maria and al the knights and ladies, but even—somehow^—Prince Dominic.

But then I shook my head and tried to restore a little rationality to my thoughts. Considering how easily my predecessor had dealt with Evrard and me, two theoreticaly competent wizards, the regent would never be able to get past him and set the monster loose.

We rode several miles down the valey, farther than I had ever gone, to where it opened out into flowering pasturelana “By the way, Wizard,” said the duchess to Evrard, “there’s some sort of booth on the plateau at the head of the valey, and the man there said something very odd about how you might be working for them ...” Evrard interrupted her. “Excuse me, my lady, but might you have any food with you?” He had not, I realized, had anything to eat for nearly two days but the wood nymphs berries and, even then, it had only been stale bread and lettuce. In spite of my breakast with the hermit, I was not much better off.

“I’ve got some hardboiled eggs you can have if you’re hungry,” she said, not quite grudgingly, and reined in to reach into her saddlebag. Neither Evrard, who ate three, nor I, who ate two, took time to worry about her tone.

Here, where the valey widened, a wind blew steadily and the flowers and shrubs swayed beneath a bright sky. Beyond, the valey wals closed in again, leaving only a very narrow gap just broad enough for the river to rush through and disappear with a faint roar. Through the gap, the hils were distant and blue; the plateau itself must drop off steeply here. It would have been nice to go on looking at the scenery, but I had responsibilities.

‘Listen, my lady,” I said. “The king asked me to keep an eye on the kingdom for him. I cannot have you upsetting the whole court while he is away.” Diana’s expression softened. “Yes, you’re certainly right. Nothing should happen that wil distress Haim-eric when he comes back. He’s an excelent king, but he is an old man and he doesn’t need shocks.

Nimrod should be near here,” she went on cheerfuly. “I wonder if he’s had any success yet.”

A bush only a few feet from us suddenly stirred and the tal huntsman unfolded himself from behind it. “Didn’t think I could hide behind such inadequate cover, my lady?” he asked with a grin.

Diana, who had jerked with surprise, burst into laughter. “No, I didn’t. What luck have you had?”

‘Clothing yet, but the track’s stil very fresh. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that magic rabbit in my nets within the naif hour.”

‘Take my wizard with you,” said the duchess, “and go back to your nets. The Royal Wizard and I wil stay here in case the rabbit gets by you.” The duchess and I sat our horses, watching Evrard and Nimrod in the distance. Now was my chance. If I was going to deal with the old wizard’s monster, whether loose or locked up, I had to try to clear away everything else that kept distracting me: the Cranky Saint, the entrepreneurs, Dominic’s strange behavior

and, especialy, what the duchess was doing in asking her wizard for horned rabbits and then carrying on with a hunter who appeared out of the woods to hunt them.

But she spoke before I could. “Tel me, Wizard,” she said with a flash of gray eyes, “why this sudden prudish interest in my affairs?”

“You don’t need to assure me of your honor, my lady. I just want you to realize what you’re doing. Even though you put Dominic off with vaporings about maidenly uncertainty, the entire court, including the regent, knows you’ve never been uncertain in your

life.”

She did have the grace to look embarrassed then, but she let me keep on talking.

“And for you to refuse one man, and then immediately leave on a hunt with another ... And you camped out with him, I presume, if you weren’t at your castle? You distracted Dominic by sending him down to the old wizard’s cottage, but that doesn’t mean you can forget him.”

“You speak as though you thought I had become scandalous in my old age,” the duchess said, coldly

and evenly.

I had certainly never spoken to her like this before, but I did seem to have gained and kept her attention. “You know the royal court must be rife with speculation and rumor. It’s wel known that Dominic felt he would have to marry you, to continue the royal line, back before the king met the queen, and that he dropped the plan with relief when the king’s marriage made it unnecessary. For him to propose to you now, without the slightest bit of encouragement in the years between, shows that he’s wiling to let himself be insulted and humiliated if he thinks it’s necessary to stop the rumors.” So that’s your explanation?” she said icily. “That Dominic doesn’t realy want to marry me, he only wants to preserve the kingdom’s reputation?”

“What’s your explanation?”

She looked at me thoughtfuly, her anger draining away. “Dominic’s been living in the royal castle, as royal heir, since he was four years old and his father died. I’m not at al sure he realy wanted to be king, but it was al he’d ever known.”

For two years I had thought of Yurt as my kingdom. Yet at times like this, I was reminded that bom the kingdom itself and the people in it had lived and had plans and agreements and quarrels long, long before I arrived.

“Dominic is a little slow sometimes,” Diana continued, “but this last year it’s finaly sunk in that he’s actualy free, for the first time in his memory. But being Dominic, his first thought is to tie himself down again. He says he wants to leave Yurt, but he can’t imagine doing so by himself.” She laughed. “I guess even I look better to him than some girl from down in the vilage.”

“But how could he support himself and his new wife?”

“I don’t imagine he’s thought that far,” she said with a shrug.

This might answer some of my questions about the regent, but it stil left the duchess’ oehavior inexplicable. She outranked me far too thoroughly for me to force her to tel me anything; al I could do was make her angry enough that she’d keep talking. “But how about Nimrod? You’ve been encouraging him, my lady, encouraging him as blatantly as any vilage flirt. When he finds out that you had no real interest in him, that you were only using him to provoke the regent, isn t his reaction going to be highly scandalous itself?” The duchess’ frown cleared unexpectedly at what I had thought was my worst accusation. But before I could react, I caught a sudden hint of something moving.

“The great horned rabbit!” Evrard shouted to us.

We rode quickly to where a net, almost invisible under some bushes, thrashed wildly. Nimrod, wearing enormous gloves, reached into the brush and puled the net out.

Struggling against the cords was a real rabbit.

Nimrod laughed and freed it carefuly. But as it flashed away, the duchess turned to Evrard with a look of irritation. “So your magic couldn’t tel you the difference between a magical creature and an ordinary one? I’l tel you what. We’re in a hurry so why don t you try a wizardly caling spel to bring the great horned rabbit into our nets?’

Evrard flushed deeply but started at once on a spel. It wasn’t one I recognized; I wondered if it might be something else he had learned in Elerius’s course.

The chirping of birds, which had been a constant background sound, was suddenly intensified. A flock of sparrows congregated from al over the valey and settled, with madly flapping wings and incessant chirps, on Evrard’s head and arms. ‘ Been taking some tips from the wood nymph?” I said sarcasticaly. Even / had never attracted sparrows by mistake. Evrard disappeared under a wave of brown feathers.

Laughing over the birds’ voices, he said the words to end his spel. No longer drawn by magic, the sparrows hesitated, then shot off. Evrard reemerged into view and tried to brush off his sleeves. “But it should have worked—” he began, then stopped short.