Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 (7 page)

“Ask Evrard himself what he needs,” I said, but the smile froze on my lips. This likeable young wizard had been in the kingdom for two weeks. Could he be responsible for the great horned rabbits?

I did a little, very rapid, magic probing, which I hoped he wouldn’t notice, and felt my shoulders relax. If he had made the rabbits, it was certainly not with supernatural aid. I could understand a school-trained wizard, even one I had barely met, better than anyone else, and there was nothing about Evrard which suggested a plunge into black magic.

At this point, dinner was announced. As we moved toward the table, I noticed the chaplain standing by himself. I had almost forgotten him.

“Joachim,” I said, “let me introduce you to Evrard, the duchess’ new wizard.” His dark eyes had been distant, but at once they came back into focus. “Evrard, this is my very good friend, the Royal Chap-Iain of Yurt.”

“I am glad to meet you,” said Joachim gravely, shaking Evrard’s hand.

The young wizard winced; Joachim’s grip was strong. “I’m happy to meet you, too,” he said.

Joachim smiled then, which he had not done when he first met me. “I think Daimbert wil be pleased to have another young wizard in the kingdom.’

At dinner, the count asked us about our trip to the high plateau. I merely mentioned the Holy Grove, because I wasn’t sure now much of the situation Joachim wanted generaly known, talked a little more about the horned rabbits, and did not mention at al the strange footprint or the spel I had sensed.

I would have expected that the duchess would be most interested in the horned rabbits, especialy since she had come here at the count’s request to hunt them, but instead she started talking about the shrine.

“That’s where the toe of Saint Eusebius, the Cranky Saint, is kept, isn’t it?” she said. “He’s not a saint to trifle with! Who was that man,” turning to the count, “your great-grandfather?”

“Great-great-grandfather,” he said as though embarrassed.

“Anyway,” continued Diana, “our present count’s ancestor was a noted rapscalion and sinner.” It was hard to imagine anyone related to the white-haired count as a rapscalion. “But when he was dying, he started worrying about his soul at last, and he asked to be buried in the Holy Grove, near the shrine. But the Cranky Saint didn’t want someone with so many sins on his soul buried that close. So he rerouted the river so it flowed between the grave and his shrine!”

Everyone but Joachim laughed. The count nodded sheepishly. “That’s right. That count’s son, my own great-grandfather, was so embarrassed he had him dug up and reburied in our castle cemetery. The next day, the river was back in its normal bed.’

I wondered briefly if the Cranky Saint himself might have made the horned rabbits, but realized that someone with that sort of supernatural power would need no spels. If Evrard hadn’t made the rabbits, there

might be stil another wizard wandering around Yurt. I wasn’t going to let that go on in my kingdom. Or, as I had thought earlier, the retired Royal Wizard had lost al his good sense and summoned the powers of evil.

I was awakened from an uneasy sleep by a voice in the room with me. “Dear God.”

Abruptly awake, I lay stil for a moment in the darkness, trying to remember where I was. There was rapid, shalow breathing from the far side of the room.

Then I remembered that we were stil in the Gount’s castle, not home in the royal castle, which was why my bed felt so unfamiliar. I sat up and lit a candle. “Joachim? Are you al right?” He pushed himself up on one elbow and looked toward me. The flickering light and shadow from the candle flame made his eye sockets black and empty. But then he turned his head slightly and his eyes came back. “I had a dream.”

“I was dreaming, too,” I said. “A nightmare about the great horned rabbits. But you’re awake now and it’s not real.” He flopped back down without speaking. I reached for the candle to extinguish it, but my hand froze as he spoke. “It was real.

He was silent so long that I thought he would say nothing more, but I wasn’t at al sure I wanted to hear it anyway. I felt suddenly that there were not enough blankets on the narrow beds in the count’s second-best guest chamber.

“It wasn’t a dream,” he said at last. “It was a vision. Saint Eusebius appeared to me.”

My immediate reaction was highly interested curiosity. I had never had a vision in my life. I wondered how Joachim had known it was the saint and if he had had the sense to ask what the saint knew about the entrepreneurs on the top of the cliff. I thought of asking if the entire saint nad appeared to him or just

the toe, but decided against it. From the strain in Joachim’s voice, seeing a saint had been a deeply disturbing experience. “What did he say?” I contented myself with asking.

There was another long pause. “He doesn’t want to stay at the hermitage,’ said Joachim at last. He sounded distant, almost as if he were no longer in the room with me, although I could see his back in the candlelight. “He was very clear on that point. But he wouldn’t tel me where he wanted to go instead.”

He roled abruptly around to face me. “It was horrible, Daimbert! Ive never been addressed like that. His face was like a living flame. Yet there is nothing evil in him, only the overwhelming power of good.

The sin is in me, not to be able to l>ear it.”

He put his hands over his face. I blew out the candle and slowly stretched back out in my bed. He said nothing more. After a while I fel asleep again, although my dreams were more troubled than ever.

ni

Diana was surprisingly unwiling to have me help her search for the great homed rabbits. Even though it was the count, not the duchess herself, who had summoned me from the royal castle, I would have expected her to welcome any magical assistance.

‘My own wizard and my huntsmen wil be plenty,” she told me firmly the next morning. She wore a man’s leather tunic now and a disreputable old stained cloak, her only ornaments the wide gold bracelets she always wore. She realized she usualy did not look like a woman of the high aristocracy and enjoyed people’s reactions to her refusal to be conventional. “You can go home and keep an eye on Dominic.” I was about to protest, to tel her that if there was someone casting a powerful spel in this end of the kingdom, then Evrard might need another wizard’s assistance, but I stopped myself in time. He should have a chance to show his new employer his abilities unimpeded. Besides, although I would have liked to put it off, I needed to talk to my predecessor as soon as possible.

The count and countess thanked us for coming and waved from their gate as we al left their little castle. We had gone only a half mile, and Diana had just said she and Evrard would turn off the road in search of tracks, when she abruptly reined in. She started to speak, stopped, and merely pointed.

A man was coming toward us on foot, walking easily with long strides. He wore a green cloak ana had a heavy bow slung on his back. He would have looked entirely normal except for his height: He must have been over seven feet tal.

I probed quickly with words of the Hidden Language, suspecting another magic creature. But there was nothing about him that suggested he was other than fuly human.

He continued toward us, his long blond hair blowing out behind him. Though his hair was unkempt, his beard was neatly trimmed. Ten feet short of the duchess’ horse, he stopped and went gracefuly down on one knee.

“Greetings, my lady. I hear you need a huntsman.” His voice was surprisingly cultured and very deep.

The duchess looked flustered, which was surprising in her. “Where did you hear that?”

He looked up and smiled. He had a slow smile that lit up his face like the sun. “Its scarcely a secret that you’re trying to track some magic creatures. Horned rabbits, aren’t they?”

“And you think you could help?” She almost sounded nervous, but not as though she felt any fear of this huntsman—rather, if it had been anyone but the duchess, I would have caled it girlish shyness.

He stood up and came over to her horse, where he faced her nearly at eye level. “I’ve never failed as a

hunter and tracker,” he said, stil smiling. “Cal me Nimrod.”

“And Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord,” quoted Joachim in a low voice next to me.

Diana studied him in silence for thirty seconds. “Al right, Nimrod,” she said abruptly, almost triumphantly. “I’l give you a chance to prove your ability. We’ve spotted the great horned rabbits several times.

But we’ve never been able to catch one.”

“Then let’s begin. Il leave you to place your huntsmen and your hounds.” He strode off purposefuly toward the woods.

“Al right,” said the duchess. “Wel, good-bye, and thanks again for your offer of help!” she added to me, then kicked her horse into motion. Evrard waved at us and galoped after her.

Joachim and I looked at each other a moment in silence, then started up again for the long ride back to the royal castle. We had ridden a mile when Joachim asked, “Do you think he might have made the great horned rabbits himself?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It would take a wizard, and one wizard should always be able to recognize another. But he certainly seemed fuly informed about them. Do you think the duchess already knew him?”

“It seems unlikely,” said the chaplain. “After al, he had to tel her his name.”

“I must say,” I answered slowly, “there seems to be a whole lot going on in this end of the kingdom that I don’t yet understand.” We had gotten a late start from the count’s castle. The sun was setting by the time we came up the hil to the royal castle. In the courtyard, the staff was just finishing a voleybal game.

“I think you should probably wait until morning to go see the old wizard,’ said Joachim.

“Of course,” I said, startled at the implication that I might not. I had no intention of going into a black

forest, ful of creatures composed of dead bones and magic life, to face a wizard who might be growing senile or might have sold his soul to the devil, or both.

But the next morning saw me flying down the hil from the castle and into the woods below. In daylight, what I might find at the wizard’s cottage seemed at least slightly less terrifying than it had the night before.

For a relatively brief distance, I was always happy to fly. The rush of air past my face was exhilarating now that I had become good enough that I no longer had to give constant attention to my spels, and I liked the chance to show the old wizard that, even though I had been trained in the school he scorned, I was stil perfectly competent. Not that he ever seemed fuly convinced ....

I folowed the brick road a few miles through the trees, gliding along five feet above it, turned off at a track marked by a little pile of white chalk, part of a giant protective pentagram the wizard had made for himself when he retired, and proceeded down his narrow green valey. As usual, an ilusory lady and unicorn waited by a little bridge. The lady raised her sky-blue eyes to me as I passed over. Beyond, the wizard had a voley of magic arrows ready to repel the unwary, but the spel was tripped by someone walking down the valey floor and no arrows bothered me today.

Usualy when I came to visit my predecessor, I found him sitting on a chair in front of his little green house, built under the spreading branches of an enormous oak. But today I saw no one and the door was closed. I dropped to the ground, remembering guiltily that it had been several months since I had last come to visit.

I thought again how strange it would be if someone who prided himself on being a wizard of light and air, who had even mocked me for the moon and stars on my belt buckle the first time I had met him, had descended into black magic.

The wizard’s calico cat emerged from the long grass and pounced at my socks, making me jump. I squared my shoulders and raised my fist to knock at the door, expecting the old wizard to cal for me to come in even before I had a chance to rap. Little happened in his valey of which he was unaware. But no voice caled.

I did knock then and had to wait several moments for an answer, even though I immediately heard a loud crash inside. But then the door opened and the old wizard glared out at me.

“It’s you,’ he said, as though highly disappointed. Where I had been steeling myseli to face someone deeply sunk in evil, I found only an irritable old man.

“Excuse me, Master,” I said. “I don’t want to interrupt your experiments, but I need your wisdom and advice.” He was not in fact my master, but I had always caled him that, feeling it was appropriate for his superior age and experience.

“No wonder, being trained at that school,” the old wizard snapped. He seemed unusualy brusque, even for him. I wondered briefly how the Cranky Saint would hold up against him in a contest of irritable natures.

“I won’t keep you very long.” I glanced around surreptitiously, wondering how I could bring up the topic of the great horned rabbits. “But with your knowledge of tne magic of earth and growing things, I thought you might be able to counsel me what do about the wood nymph.”

To my surprise, his expression immediately softened. “The wood nymph, he said with a hint of a smile. “I haven’t seen her in years.” Emboldened by his mood change, I asked, “May I come in?”

He scowled again at once, but then he nodded grudgingly. “You might as wel.”

I probed, very quickly, for supernatural influences and did not find them. There was nothing about him,

any more than there had been about Evrard, that indicated the use of black magic. He turned and I folowed him inside, enormously relieved but stil wary.

I was shocked when I came through the green door into the cottage’s single room. Even though it had always been ful of herbs, books, mortars and pestles, and piles of dishes, he had managed to preserve some semblance of order, and the floor had always been swept clean. Now, mounds of decayed plant material were heaped on the floor and the furniture, amidst dirty crockery. There was an acrid smel to the place I could not identify. Shards of broken glass lay in front of the fireplace, the result, I guessed, of the crash I had heard. The calico cat sensibly refused to come in with me.