Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 (11 page)

The valey of the Holy Grove. This must be what had made Saint Eusebius cranky enough to want to leave. The king had gone on vacation, the duchess had asked Evrard for horned rabbits, Nimrod had come out of the forest offering to hunt them, and the Cranky Saint had decided to leave Yurt, al within a very short period of time. At least some of these events had to be related.

But the more I thought about it, the less sense this made. The saint, with his relics in a grove shared with a wood nymph, must certainly have seen stranger magical creatures than Evrard’s rabbits during the last fifteen hundred years. And I didn’t think there had been enough time, between when the rabbits escaped and when Joachim first heard from the bishop, for the priests in the distant city to have had a vision of the saint, write to our bishop, and for him to write the chaplain.

Another thought struck me. “You didn’t make any other magical creatures besides the great horned rabbits?”

“Of course not,” said Evrard, his blue eyes round in innocence.

“But what did the duchess want the rabbits for?” I demanded.

“I wish I knew,” said Evrard. For a moment, he actualy looked troubled. “She never told me. Since they were my first assignment from my first employer, I didn’t want to ask a lot of questions. Then, the afternoon before I met you at the count’s castle, she said I should set free the ones we’d caught.”

The day the king and queen left Yurt, I thought, the day before I had seen them hopping through the nymph’s valey. The duchess had already told me she had wanted to wait until after King Haimeric had gone on his trip before letting the royal court know she had a wizard of her own. I hoped her only motive was not wanting to distract the king from his vacation.

“The count had sent us a message the same day, saying he’d seen one—the one we couldn’t catch. So I guess she decided we might as wel have al of them loose.” Evrard smiled again. “When I first met you and we were talking about Elerius, I could barely resist teling you about my rabbits! But the duchess had said it was supposed to be a secret.”

“A secret which I ve now guessed. Don’t worry. I’m not about to tel everybody else. But why,” having a sudden thought, “if you were able to catch two horned rabbits in one day the first time, has it taken you three days to catch just one? “

“Wel, / certainly could have caught it much faster than that,” said Evrard self-righteously. “But the duchess told me this time that she didn’t want them caught with magic. She wanted to use them as a test for her new huntsman.”

No wonder she had refused my assistance back at the count’s castle. Between having her wizard make homed rabbits and her huntsman hunt them, Diana was very busy lately testing the people around her.

The queen had commented once that the duchess always did exactly what she liked.

“So you think she asked you for rabbits specificaly as a test for him?”

“I doubt it,” said Evrard with a shrug. Proud as he was of his rabbits, he was starting to find my questions about the duchess a little dul. “You saw how surprised she was when he first appeared, and I had started making the horned rabbits over a week earlier.”

“Did you break the spel when Nimrod finaly shot it?” I asked.

“I didn’t have to. The spel only keeps al the different parts together as long as nothing happens to any of the parts. Even with Elerius’s help, I couldn’t make a rabbit that would hold together once it was trapped or shot.”

“Who is Nimrod, anyway? Do you know?”

Evrard shrugged again. “Just some hunter. I guess she wanted to see how good he was before employing him.” This didn’t seem right, but Evrard didn’t give me a chance to respond. He stretched his arms and smiled. “But that’s enough about the duchess! You and I hardly had a chance to talk properly last week, and I’ve been eager to catch you up on al the news from the school.’

I suddenly felt I had let this whole ridiculous matter of saints and horned rabbits become much too serious. I forced my hands and shoulders to relax. “Fine—but first, let me have my dressing gown back. If you don’t have one of your own, tel the duchess you need money for ‘personal purchases.’”

For the rest of the afternoon, Evrard and I swapped stories: exploits in the wizards’ school, exams for which we had never studied, near escapes from the Guardians in the City down below the school, jokes played on other students and, in Evrard’s case, even once on Zahlfast. After dinner, we decided to share a last glass of wine, which somehow became a whole bottle. I had not laughed so much or so long for two years. It was wel past midnight by the time we turned out the magic lights.

But as I fel asleep—on the pilow with feet, which Evrard had switched back at some point—I remembered again the footprint, manlike yet inhuman, that I had seen in the Holy Grove.

Early the next day, Evrard and I rode out of the castle on old white mares. I’d assumed a felow city boy would want a placid mount. We rode down the hil, past the cemetery, into the woods. Our saddles and harnesses creaked and the horses’ hooves rang holowly on the bricks of the road, but otherwise the summer morning was nearly silent.

“He’s a fairly irritable old wizard,” I told Evrard, “so try not to say anything that wil upset him. For example, he doesn’t like the wizards’ school—he was trained under the old apprentice system, long before the school first opened.’

Evrard stifled a yawn and grinned at me. “Now I’m going to be afraid to say anything.”

“And cal him Master. He likes that.”

“But the Master of the school—” He stopped, laughed, and shook his head.

I gave Evrard an encouraging smile and wondered why I felt it so necessary to explain everything to him. I had come down alone to meet my predecessor two years ago, without the slightest idea what I would find, and managed fine—wel, no, actualy I hadn’t managed very wel at al.

“He’s getting old,” I said. “And he’s started to lose control of his personal life. He no longer keeps his house tidy and he was even more offensive to me last week than usual, though it’s hard to tel. If he’s lost control in one area, he may also have had his magic get away from him.”

Evrard glanced toward me, worried this time. “Then why are we going to see him?”

“Because I think something has gotten away from him. At the same time you were using some of the old magic to make horned rabbits, he may have been using similar spels to make something almost human.”

He did not answer. We continued along the road in silence.

A half hour’s ride through the fresh green of the forest brought us to the track, marked by the little pile of white stones, which led off from the main road and into the old wizard’s valey. The trees hung low enough here that we walked our horses. After a few

turns of the track, we could see the branches thinning ahead, and then we came out by the bridge.

“Did we realy have to get up this early?” asked Evrard, yawning again. He had not yet seen what waited by the bridge. I smiled to myself and waited.

Then he turned nis head and saw the ilusory lady sitting on the bank, her golden hair spread across the grass and the unicorn resting its head in her lap. He was off his horse in a second and down on one knee before her. “Lady, let me put myself in your service. I am Evrard, the ducal wizard of Yurt.”

As she always did when someone tried to talk to her, the ilusory lady lifted her sky-blue eyes to him without answering, then rose and started down the valey, an arm around the unicorn’s neck and her hair floating in a cloud behind her.

“Wait, Lady, I didn’t mean to offend you!” Evrard caled, stil on his knee.

I laughed. “She’s an ilusion, young wizard.” I paused, wondering why I had caled him “young wizard,” which is what the teachers tended to cal us. “She fooled me the first time, too. Don’t waste your time with someone that insubstantial.”

He scrambled back up into the saddle, laughing. “If that’s a sample of your crazy old predecessor s magic, I’m impressed! No one I’ve ever Known could create a woman who looked that real, even the perfectly sane members of the ilusions faculty. I wish she was real. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Wait until you meet the queen,” I said confidently. The lady and the unicorn had disappeared; I started on down the valey.

But Evrard had stopped and his brow was wrinkled. “Daimbert, I think I ought to tel you something before we get to the old wizard’s house.” I puled up my horse, wondering what could be the problem now. “Yes?”

“You know you asked me if I’d made anything else besides the horned rabbits? Wel, I did.”

I took a deep breath, trying not to be angry. Having another young wizard in the kingdom was not turning out to be quite the help I’d hoped it would be. “You made a creature that has almost human footprints.”

“Wel, yes,” said Evrard, not nearly as embarrassed as I thought he ought to be for having lied to me. “But it wasn’t a very realistic creature. So, if your predecessor’s magic is this good, I thought I’d better mention it to you before you accuse him of creating it.”

“Would you like to tel me why you made it?” I asked very quietly.

Evrard gave his broad smile. “I was hoping to impress the duchess, of course. She laughed at my horned rabbits, even when I got the horns to stay on, and then she was angry with me for letting them escape, and then for only catching two of them again. I decided I had to do something or I would be out of my first job almost before it had started!” I had to smile back, caught between irritation and sympathy. I recaled several of my own desperate magical improvisations two years ago, when my new royal employers had assumed I would know how to produce certain effects, where actualy I had no idea. The duchess seemed to be expecting more of Evrard in his first two weeks in Yurt than had been expected of me in my first two months.

“So I decided to make something totaly different to surprise her,” he continued, his good humor restored, “something that might even be frightening. The duchess had gotten me rabbits’ bones and sheep’s horns, but I didn’t have any human bones, of course. So I used some sticks and tried to extrapolate from the spel I’d learned in school.”

“And what happened?” I asked, envious in spite of myself. It had taken me a long time to discover that such a spel was even possible, much less to make it work.

He shook his head ruefuly. “I’m afraid it didn’t

work very wel. My creature wouldn’t stand up straight and bits kept faling off. The legs and feet weren’t bad, but the rest only looked human if you squinted right. And then when I’d given up, I couldn’t get the spel to dissolve again!”

“You didn’t try shooting it? That seemed to work with the rabbits.’ But as I spoke, I remembered the pilow that stil had feet.

“Wel, no. After al, it did look sort of human. And besides, I’d tried to make the spels a little stronger this time. But I certainly couldn’t show it to the duchess! I decided I’d better just get it out of the way, and it would soon fal apart on its own.”

“So you took it up on the plateau and set it loose,” I provided when he seemed unwiling to continue, “where it went down into the valey and managed to terrify me thoroughly.” Evrard laughed! ‘ It did? That’s even better than I expected.”

I forced myself to laugh as wel. “I even thought someone in the kingdom was practicing black magic.” Evrard, I thought, seemed much more than two years younger than I. But then, I reminded myself, he had not gone through the experiences of my first six months in Yurt, which I felt had aged me considerably.

“Come on,” I said. “Since we’ve come this far, I might as wel introduce you to the old wizard. He’s the most senior wizard in the region and you realy should cal on him. And then I guess we’d better go over to the duchess* end of the kingdom and catch your creature before it terrifies anyone else.”

m

We scrambled down a steep incline, leading our horses, and I paused at the bottom, looking ahead down the valey. Usualy at this point, a shower of arrows began to fly across the path, but today there were no arrows, and some quick magic probing found no sign that they had ever been mere. This made things easier because it meant we neither had to crawl under the arrows’ flight nor fly over them, but I felt suddenly uneasy. If the old wizard was no longer doing the spels to maintain his defenses—especialy since the arrows were also one of his best magic tricks—to what was he giving his attention?

But then I reminded myself that the strange magical creatures in the kingdom had been Evrard’s al along. I relaxed and decided this was just one more instance of the old wizard letting everything go.

Evrard, who did not realize there ever had been arrows here, stroled casualy in front of me, leading his mare. The grassy track led us around a few more turns and then into the clearing where stood the enormous oak which sheltered the old wizard’s house. We dropped our horses’ reins and walked slowly forward. I tried to decide if the ominous appearance the rather innocuous little green house seemed to have acquired in the last few days was only my imagination.

I jumped as the door swung open with a crash. The old wizard came out as though catapulted and slammed it behind him. Even at a distance of twenty yards, I could see he was breathing hard.

But he tried to appear casual. He looked shortly toward Evrard, then gave me his customary scowl. “So, I see young wizards are multiplying as fast as the great horned rabbits,” he said. “And they’re stil as happily convinced, I’d say from this one’s fancy jacket, that they can control the powers of darkness.’

Evrard stepped forward and went into the ful formal bow. “Greetings, Master. I am the duchess’ new wizard.

The old wizard lifted shaggy eyebrows at me over Evrard’s head. “What does the duchess want a wizard for? I’d have thought your example would have taught her that young wizards these days don’t know any magic. But then the old duke’s wizard, back over thirty

years ago, was so incompetent that maybe she’s thinking nothing could be worse.”

Normaly I would have been interested in his tacit admission that even a wizard trained under the old apprenticeship system could be incompetent. But I was distracted by wondering if the wizard had simply rushed out of his house to keep us from seeing whatever he might have inside, or whether something in there had physicaly thrown him out.