Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 (35 page)

It sounded as though the wedding party was coming down from the chapel. I went to find Evrard, wondering if it would be more unsuitable to leave before the wedding feast or irresponsible to stay for it. But then a huge crash resounded in the great hal, folowed by a scream.

The scream was repeated. It was a woman’s voice.

In the chapel stairway I could hear the shouts of the knights of Yurt. But they couldn’t help with what I knew I would find.

I raced into the great hal as Evrard and the knights burst in from the other side. In the middle of the hal, between the rose-decorated trestle tables, stood Gwen, clutching her baby, a trayful of silverware at her feet and an overturned bench blocking her retreat. Before her was the monster.

“Good,” said Evrard.

“What do you mean, good?” I almost screamed at him.

The great hal was instantly a scene of panic as women and men yeled, some fighting to retreat up the chapel stairs as others fought to get out, and those already in the great hal ran in al directions. Only Gwen stood frozen; a creature as tal as a man but twice as broad slowly advanced toward her, its undead eyes staring fixedly at the baby.

One of the royal knights leaped forward, but the

monster lifted an arm, almost lazily, and dashed him to the flagstones.

Evrard sprang between Gwen and the monster, and it paused, then shifted its eyes to him. “My spel’s working!” he shouted to me. “Come on! It should folow.” He darted by the monster and out through the tal doors into the courtyard. Turning its back on Gwen and the dazed knight, the monster lumbered

after him.

Evrard waited in the courtyard, but as soon as the monster came out he was off again, flying through the gates, across the drawbridge and onto the grass beyond. Again the monster folowed and I flew behind. Out of the valey it moved relatively slowly, which was a relief. But seeing it again brought back vividly the last time I had seen it, as it had raced away from kiling the old wizard.

“What did you do?” I demanded, dropping to the ground next to Evrard.

“I improvised,” he said, panting but looking inordinately proud of himself. “I know they purposely never taught us the summoning spel, but a few of us young wizards found it in the Master’s books, one night about a week before I left the school.”

It was exactly what I had done myself. Maybe the Master had known al along what we were doing. The monster had stopped and was eyeing us, its head thrust forward between massive shoulders.

“I decided you were right,” Evrard went on, “that I couldn’t very wel summon something without a proper mind, so I altered the spel. You’re not the only person who can improvise!” I had to admire his ingenuity, if not his good sense. I kept an eye warily on the monster. It moved slowly toward us and we backed away. It moved again, slightly faster, and we backed up faster.

“But how did you manage to put a spel on it?” I yeled to Evrard.

“While you were al busy worrying about the saint, I went back into the cave after it, remember?”

The monster was backing us down the hil toward the woods. Its eyes stil seemed alive even without the old wizard looking through them. “You found it but didn’t tel me?” I demanded furiously.

“Wel, no, I didn’t actualy find it. But I went far enough back to be fairly sure I was going the right way. So I set up my summoning spel and added a few touches to your magic marks, which I hoped would help draw the monster in the right direction. Once it was out of the cave, I didn’t doubt it would be able to folow us back here if I’d made my spel strong enough. And it looks as though I did!” His spel was certainly working. The monster seemed fascinated by Evrard. Slowly and inexorably, it kept coming toward us.

We flew, at this point, down the hil to where the brick road from the castle entered the trees and paused again. “Evrard,” I said, speaking slowly and carefuly, “would you like to tel me why you caled the monster out of the valey and brought it here?”

“You’re not pleased with me?” asked Evrard in distress.

So he’d figured it out at last.

“And I’d thought you’d be impressed! If I hadn’t summoned it, your Cranky Saint would probably have shipped it out of his valey and sent it after you anyway, since he seems to like you so much.” I ignored this jab. Overcoming the monster would need both of us. Besides, he might be right. “But why did you bring it here?” The monster swung its arms as it advanced more quickly now. It would have been frightening enough if it was some sort of enormous creature, like a bear, but the mindless stare made it horrible, a force of nature given separate volition and evil intent.

“Wel, I had to get it out the valey, of course,” said Evrard, moving back into the woods. “It was able to

move much faster there, so it was clear we didn’t have the slightest chance against it. Since we were coming back to the royal castle ourselves, didn’t it make sense to have it come here, too?”

“I wonder if it kiled anyone on the way,” I said grimly.

“It shouldn’t have,” said Evrard. “I deliberately made my spel so strong that it wouldn’t want to stop.’

He might be content to gloat over how wel his spel had worked, but I could no longer stand the tension. “Come on,” I said abruptly. “Let’s take it down to the old wizard’s cottage. He had it imprisoned there once; we may be able to bind it again.

I had become aware of the knights, led by Prince Ascelin, assembling on the castle hil. I couldn’t risk letting him be kiled on his wedding day.

Evrard and I flew along the road into the woods and the castle was lost to sight behind us. Almost immediately, we had to pick up speed as the monster pursued with a rapidity it had not yet shown today. It chased us with its arms extended, emitting a low roar.

Evrard, I was sure, was now flying farther and faster than he ever had before. We darted back and forth along the forest path, avoiding overhanging branches, but behind us we heard snapping and crashing as the monster plowed straight through.

We shot out into the clearing before the old wizard’s cottage maybe a quarter mile ahead of it. Grabbing Evrard by the arm when he seemed to sag, I flew straight up and hovered twenty feet above the ground.

“Try to distract the monster when it gets here,” I said. ‘I’ve got to look at my predecessor’s notes.” I dropped to the ground and went through the green door into the wizard’s cottage.

The room was, if possible, an even greater mess than when I had seen it last. I looked around quickly, hoping wildly there might be something here to help. Most of the old wizard’s books were dusty and appeared long-unopened, but a massive register was propped up on the table, ready if he ever came back. I glanced at the page to which it was open, then began to read. Here was the spel, written out in the old wizard’s spidery hand, that had created his creature from dead bones. In the first three lines were two mentions of herbs of which I’d never heard.

I flipped forward. The spel went on for fifteen pages.

A wordless roar sent me diving for the window, which turned out to be locked. But the creature did not come in. In a moment, I looked cautiously out the door.

It was in the clearing in front of the cottage, circling below Evrard and ignoring me, at least for the moment. Evrard remained twenty feet off the ground, concentrating on holding himself up. “Keep it looking at you,” I said quickly, “but don’t do anything to excite it. If you can hold its attention for another two minutes, I’l try to find the herbs for the spel to bind it.” I shot behind the old wizard’s cottage.

My predecessor had always had an herb garden where he grew the most common magical herbs. I had thought I knew it wel, but this summer over half the garden was given to a low, leafy plant I never remembered seeing here before. I plucked one, looked at it closely, and probed it with magic. This was the same herb the old wizard had found in the valey.

I flew back to Evrard and the monster, my fingers already starting to glow blue. “I’m going to try to put a special binding spel on it, but this wffl only work if the creature is absolutely stil. Let’s go over to the tree.” Trying to fly and cast a complicated spel at the same time was too much for me. We flew to the enormous oak tree that sheltered the old wizard’s cottage.

Evrard colapsed against the trunk, the sweat running down his face. In spite of my own greater

practice in flying, I was not in much better shape. I wondered uneasily how wel the monster could climb.

At first, it seemed content to circle the tree, appearing and disappearing from our sight. Its search for life had not been blunted by kiling the old wizard. I hoped the cat had had the sense to hide.

I started trying to put the wizard’s binding spel together, though if the monster kept on moving, it wasn’t going to do much good. In the cave, I had been able to bind it only with the old wizard’s help. I realized that I should have taught Evrard the spel immediately. Once again I had failed, this time in being too caught up the last two days in my own exhaustion and sorrow and sense of responsibility. I had neglected to look for help from someone who was, at least potentialy, a perfectly competent young wizard and had, after al, once made a manlike creature himself. “Stop moving!” I muttered in the monster’s direction. “Otherwise, I’l never be able to bind you.”

In a moment, Evrard had caught his breath enough to sit up again. He turned to face me, his jaw set. “Wel, Daimbert, I guess this is my problem and there are two ways to solve it.

“My caling spel has made it interested only in me. You said it was searching for life and the life it wants is mine. Either I can leave Yurt, which would make it folow me—” I started to speak but he didn’t give me a chance. “—or I can go down to meet it. While it does to me whatever it wants to do, you can try your binding spel.” IV

“Good God, Evrard,”! cried, “you can’t be serious! You certainly cant spend the rest of your life flying around the western kingdoms with it on your tail, but there must be a solution short of letting it kil you!”

“Such as?”

“If it would just stand stil for a minute, I’d try this binding spel. It did work before.”

Evrard looked at me from behind lowered eyelids. “I’ve got another idea. How about if I try dropping things on it? I know I can’t kil it that way, but with a boulder lying across it, it might be more susceptible to your binding spel.”

“Good idea,’ I said, taking him by the shoulders to look at him and urgently hoping he had not been serious a moment before.

“As soon as I finish catching my breath, I’l go colect some rocks. The monster can’t be stronger than a river, and I was able to block a river’s course, even if only for a little while.” Evrard flew off toward the stream and soon he was back, carrying a good-sized stone with magic. He dropped it in the middle of the clearing and went back cheerfuly for another. The monster poked at the stone with its hand, then hurried after him. It pushed straight and unhesitatingly through the dense brush.

In fifteen minutes, while I desperately worked on spels, Evrard had accumulated a fairly good pile. Twice he stopped on the oak’s wide branch to rest and, al the time, the monster prowled back and forth, folowing him from below. I did not trust its intent expression.

It was some of the hardest magic I had ever done. Not only was the spel itself fiendishly difficult, but I constantly had to hold steady the part I had already completed. A spel I had worked very quickly with the old wizard now appeared interminable when I tried it alone.

Evrard’s voice suddenly cut through the words of the Hidden Language. “Do you think these are enough rocks?”

I came back abruptly to myself, realized that it was probably very foolish to try such a complicated spel balanced on a tree branch, and shouted, “Let’s try it!” Evrard, stil hovering, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and began lifting his rocks with magic.

I couldn’t help him and stil keep the binding spel ready and he could only manage one rock at a time while flying, but very rapidly he started lifting and dropping rocks on the monster’s upturned face.

The first few missed and, as the next bounced from its shoulder, the monster began to run in circles. But then Evrard got into the rhythm, saying the words of the Hidden Language so rapidly that the spel was almost self-sustaining, and two lucky shots in a row knocked the monster off its feet. With a whoop of triumph, Evrard piled another dozen rocks on top if it, so that at least momentarily, it lay stil.

My turn now. This spel was too difficult to do while flying or even sitting in a tree. I came down to the ground, ignoring Evrard’s warning shouts, and threw the binding spel at the monster.

The loops of the spel caught and held. Crushed by stone and held by the old wizard’s magic, it lay looking at me with unblinking eyes.

Evrard’s feet hit the ground beside me. “So is that it? We’ve done it? We’ve done it!”

“It’s stil very much alive,” I said, “and if we aren’t careful it—”

But I couldn’t speak and work magic at the same time. And the monster’s arm was starting to twitch, pushing upward again the stones that imprisoned it.

I threw another loop of the binding spel around it and again it lay stil. But it was no longer looking at Evrard. It was looking at me.

We darted back up into the oak. We had a second to catch our breaths, but a very precarious second. Even the old wizard, who had created this binding spel in the first place, hadn’t been able to keep his creature pinned down for long. I wiped my forehead with an arm. “We have to find a way to destroy it before it breaks free.”

“Can you teach me the binding spel?” asked Evrard eagerly.

Til teach you the magic to keep it going.” The monster twitched again, and again I renewed the binding loops. “There, did you see what I did?” I pushed drooping bits of plant into his hand. “Just keep saying that spel.”

“Let’s hear it again.”

After hearing it once more and after one abortive attempt of his own in which both of the monster’s arms threatened to break out, Evrard knew enough of the spel to strengthen it whenever it started to weaken, which seemed to be constantly.